CHAPTER IV. CASE STUDY#1: UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION
“For most people, the United Nations, now with 192 member countries, is a large, untidy organization which often disappoints and is rarely heard of when it succeeds. Only a few now remember that The United Nations came into being in 1942 just after Pearl Harbor. It was the brainchild of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill and described the alliance that was then fighting for its life against Hitler and his Axis allies.”
Sir Brian Urquhart[1]
IV.1. Introduction
This is the first of two case studies of Institutional Documentary Production. For the purposes of this dissertation, we shall define Institutional Documentary as Documentary produced for a client. In both of the first two case studies, the clients were entities working under the umbrella of the international organization known as The United Nations.
The two United Nations production entities selected for study here are:
2. The MONUSCO Video Unit 2007-2012 (www.YouTube.com/MONUSCO
IV.2. Aims
Both entities share superficially similar goals, in that both were trying to generate what they consider to be positive images of the United Nations and United Nations activities. However, these case studies will show that these two entities differ significantly in terms of origin, mandate, communications philosophy and styles of documentary production and distribution. In addition, these case studies will show why the fact that both United Nations Television and The MONUSCO Video Unit and are run by the United Nations, with its unique institutional philosophy and management style, is significant.
The author believes that an appreciation of the unique institutional philosophy and management style of the United Nations is essential for any evaluation of the UN’s efforts in strategic communication; for the specific purposes of this dissertation, the author believes these case studies will show that the United Nations has always had difficulty creating effective contemporary documentary product, and is now having difficulty adjusting to the demands and challenges of New Media.
IV.3. Method
The primary method I shall employ to explore the nature of creative decision-making at UNTV and The MONUSCO Video Unit will be the analytic structure created by German cinema scholar Thomas Elsaesser for examining the production process of industrial films by dividing it up into “the three A’s: Auftrag ( commissioner); Anlass ( reason); Adressat ( use).”[2]
To illustrate and compare the evolution of UNTV documentary styles, I shall employ the Kristin Thompson model for Text Analysis of selected documentary productions from the United Nations entities being studied.[3] Finally, to help place the Analysis of the evolution of UNTV documentary style in a historical context, I shall provide a basic chronology of UNTV production from the past four decades. To begin, let us start with an overview of the origins of the United Nations Department of Public Information.
IV.4. The United Nations Department of Public Information[4]
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the first United Nations to organize the Allied war effort in 1942, one of the first actions taken by the new organization was to create a United Nations Information Organization in New York. The primary task of the UNIO was to promotion of the Allied effort in the United States through dissemination of what was euphemistically called public information; and this public information included propaganda films like Grierson’s Churchill’s Island. [5]
When the United Nations as we know it today was created in 1946, all United Nations television and media production were under the supervision of the United Nations Department of Public Information, which, as the name implies, was mandated with providing the general public with information about the United Nations and United Nations activities. However, in this context , it is important to remember that the 1946 UN Charter never specified how UN DPI was supposed to implement its mandate. Media philosophy and communications strategies were not mentioned. One result of this omission has been a constant internal debate between media professionals and political officers regarding UN media philosophy.
For example, many media professionals in UN Public Information have had a journalistic background, and would like to see their task as keeping the world informed about what the United Nations is doing in their name. However, since all media professionals working for the UN Department of Public Information have the generic title of Information Officer, they also soon learn that providing the general public with positive information about a given organization is not the same as news coverage of that organization. Indeed, one of the first instructions given to any UN Information Officer is to emphasize “solutions, and not problems.
While it might be technically accurate to say that the job of a UN Public Information Officer is to make propaganda for the UN, the pejorative connotations of the term propaganda are still strong in the Western world, so most UN managers avoid it altogether. Instead, many follow the old war time tradition of saying that “while the enemy does propaganda, we do public information.”
Today, many UN managers prefer to equate the professional function of a UN Information Officer with that of a Corporate Public Relations Officer. As shall be seen, this internal debate regarding the mandate of the UN Department of Public Information has continued until the present day. However, as is customary within the United Nations, the formal discussion has been limited to the highest levels between the decision makers in senior management; those actually responsible for media production, like the Chiefs of United Nations Television have been consistently left out of the discussion of strategic communications goals and strategies.
IV.5. The Grierson Model for Documentary
After a decade developing his unique style of documentary as a producer promoting the British Empire with the British Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, and, later, with the British General Post Office Film Unit, Grierson was invited by the government of Canada to set up the National Film Board in October of 1938. By this time, the Grierson style of documentary was well established.
Among other things, Grierson prized production efficiency over the poetic aesthetics of documentary; as soon as he realized location shooting was both time-consuming and expensive, he encouraged his team to make compilation films using old footage whenever possible in the tradition of Soviet documentarian Esther Shub. More controversially, even when it was technically possible , Grierson discouraged location sound recording of individuals telling their own stories, preferring to use omniscient narrators recorded in the studio in what Grierson called Direct Action Narration. Not all of his team had agreed with this approach; one of the most significant dissenters was Grierson’s own sister Ruby Grierson, who was quoted as telling her brother,” The trouble with you is that you look at things as though they were in goldfish bowl…I’m going to break your goldfish bowl…”
Ruby Grierson then proceeded to make the powerful documentary Housing Problems (1935)[6] with only the voices of the subjects telling their own individual stories after she directed them: “Now tell the bastards exactly what it’s like to live in slums…”[7]
When Grierson moved to Canada in 1938, by all accounts, the Canadian government offered Grierson creative freedom and generous economic resources, and Grierson responded by importing many members of his talented UK team to work with him at the NFB. When World War II started in 1939, Grierson was appointed Minister of the Wartime Information Board by Canadian Prime Minister William MacKenzie King, with the primary mandate of producing documentary films to promote the Allied War Effort.
As a result, during World War II, Grierson’s Direct Action Narration became the international standard in the film industry. The reasons were more practical than aesthetic. Prior to the advent of television in the 1950’s, documentaries like Grierson’s were usually part of the Newsreels projected in cinemas before entertainment features. Technical conditions were primitive, and sound and picture quality was often poor; as a result, while a film’s audio track might possess acoustic subtleties in the mixing studio, such subtleties usually disappeared by the time the film was projected in a theatre. As a result, rather than risk an incoherent or muddled soundtrack, Grierson’s solution was to have a single, dominant speaker conveying all important information to the audience. To illustrate, here is an Analysis of one of Grierson’s Canadian National Film Board productions for the World War II propaganda effort: Director Stuart Legg’s 1941 documentary Churchill’s Island.
IV.5.1. Analysis of Churchill’s Island (1941)
Featuring a stirring wall-to-wall narration by Canadian actor Lorne Greene, Churchill’s Island is also perhaps one of the best examples of the Grierson Direct Action Narration. From the start of the film, the very real threat of a German invasion conveys a powerful sense of urgency. We see newsreel footage of ordinary English civilians from all walks of life preparing to defend their country against the Germans we see preparing to attack them. Greene’s omniscient and rousing third person narration holds the 21:30 minute film together. Greene, who later became a television star on the popular American television Western series Bonanza, had a rich baritone voice (nick-named by colleagues The Voice of Doom), making him an ideal narrator for an unapologetic wartime propaganda film like this one. The contrast between Greene’s full-throated narration and the cool, calm voices of the English civilians chatting on the frontlines as they prepare for battle is effective, and helps offset the somewhat heavy-handed symphonic score used throughout to emphasize Greene’s key lines.
The film also engages us emotionally by contrasting the informal, friendly banter of the English civilians with one of Hitler’s speeches and shots of the German military machine. The film ends with an unexpected pay-off: a cameo appearance by Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself as he tours England’s frontline defenses with his customary smile and charm.
Commentary: Directed by long-time Grierson protégé Stuart Legg, Churchill’s Island won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject, and was shown in 800 theatres around Canada for 6 months, and was then distributed for the duration of the war to libraries, schools, churches and factories around Canada on the 16mm distribution network set up by Grierson and the NFB.6
Today, there is general agreement that Churchill’s Island is one of Grierson’s most successful wartime documentaries. Produced when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, the film employs basic dramatic devices to get the motion picture spectator to care about the fate of the English civilians we see. Since the primary target was the North American audience, with the goal of getting the United States to support the British war effort, this film achieved its apparent goals.
IV.5.2. The Grierson Legacy
As mentioned in Chapter 2, when Grierson resigned from the Canadian Film Board in 1946, he had grand plans for several post World War II projects in the United States, including a position as the first United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Public Information[8].
He was preparing for this assignment in London when he learned his visa to the United States had suddenly been revoked by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, in response to the Gouzhenko espionage scandal in which Grierson’s secretary’s name had been mentioned. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Grierson fully cooperated with the subsequent Canadian investigation, and was never formally accused of any misconduct. However, the undeclared Cold War had already begun, and guilt by association was enough to destroy a career – even one as illustrious as Grierson’s had been. Understandably desperate, Grierson took a job as UNESCO Director of Mass Communications and Public Information in Paris, France, where his inability to speak the official language of French was a decided handicap.
Undaunted, Grierson then attempted to spread his vision of documentary throughout the British Commonwealth countries of India, Australia, and other countries in the Anglophonic developing world. Today, the Grierson influence can still be found in former colonies of the United Kingdom such as India and other Commonwealth countries, as well as in Francophone Africa and the United Nations. As was the case during World War II, the reasons are practical rather than aesthetic. For government administrators and other bureaucrats, the direct address narration facilitates institutional control of message, enabling them to show their bosses they are parroting the party line. Unfortunately, since many of these same administrators appear to have little or no awareness of modern media techniques, this phenomenon can become self-perpetuating, resulting in the continuous production of mediocre material of interest to few other than the VIPS being depicted.
Today, most documentarians see the Grierson direct address narration as both patronizing and antiquated, and a style to be avoided, if at all possible; indeed, between professional colleagues, direct action narration is sometimes referred to disparagingly as The Voice of God. In spite of this industry trend, United Nations Television remained wedded to the Grierson Direct Action narrative technique in television documentaries well into the new Millennium.
IV.6. United Nations Television
As mentioned previously, American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the first version of the United Nations in early 1942, with the goal of unifying the allied war effort against Hitler and the Axis power. What with the profound initial influence of John Grierson, United Nations Television might have been expected to become an institutional clone of Canada’s National Film Board. However, there were significant major differences from the start. For example, UNTV has a mandate to document the many meetings and events at the UN Secretariat in New York for both broadcast media outlets and the historical record. Given the many meetings of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, and related events, this task today consumes much of UNTV’s resources for broadcast media. Today, UN Web TV has a mandate to document official activities at the UN Secretariat for posterity and to inform the world about United Nations activities in the 8 official languages.
Otherwise, while UNTV initially emulated the National Film Board in terms of style and production methods, UNTV never had the capacity to create anything like the independent 16 mm distribution networks like John Grierson did in Canada during World War II with the NFB.9 Instead, United Nations film distribution was initially farmed out to regional United Nations Information Centers, which often had little or no incentive to promote local interest, and with lamentably predictable results. As a result, what with the rapid growth of commercial television in the years immediately after World War II, the first UNTV documentaries were seldom seen in critical donor countries like the United States or Western Europe. Since the United Nations bureaucracy has consistently tried to measure communications success in terms of quantity rather than quality, UNTV documentaries were given away in developing countries, which had a lack of programming.
There is another significant quality that makes UNTV unique in institutional documentary production. Today, the UN consists of 193 member states – all of whom are potential clients. While UN member states are not supposed to directly interfere in UNTV productions, over the years, both DPI and UNTV senior managers have learned to anticipate any potential problems with an extensive program of self-censorship, with the ultimate goal of avoiding controversy.
Thorold Dickinson, a respected British feature film director who ran an early incarnation of UNTV from 1956-60, had this to say about the UNTV production process:” If the United Nations dares to comment, it cannot avoid some measure of controversy. This it dare not do. Only the converted layman can break this circle of ineffectuality. And he must have the courage to be unpopular and the courage to persist...”10
In addition to these political obstacles, the production and distribution of UNTV products have been hampered by a labyrinth of official and unofficial bureaucratic rules and, as shall be seen, this institutional resistance to change has made it difficult for UNTV managers to keep pace with the fast-changing world of contemporary media both stylistically and technically.
The following chronologies, based primarily on interviews with former writers, directors, producers and Chiefs of UNTV, offers insights into the evolution of both the style and content of UNTV production in the years from 1975-2017.
IV.7. United Nations Television, 1975-88
Background
From 1975- 1988, the author worked as a freelance writer/director for UNTV, which was then called Radio/Visual Services; to avoid confusion, we shall hereafter refer to Radio/Visual Services as UNTV. In these years, the Canadian National Film Board connection was evident, with RVS Director Marcel Martin, Production Manager Francois Seguillon, and Distribution Head Daphne Brooke-Landis all being veterans of the NFB. As producers, RVS employed Edward Magruder Jones from the American company CBS News, Gilbert Lauzun from the French L’ORTF, and had a production staff of four American directors and two Indians. Editors and production staff were not UN staff, but all worked for an American sub-contractor named Eichwald.
In 1975, the primary task for the UNTV team of directors and producers was the Man Builds, Man Destroys series - a series of 30-minute documentaries on different environmental issues identified at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Production usually involved weeks of costly travel by the team of director, cameraman, soundman and equipment to several different countries, and then months of leisurely post-production in 16 mm. There were rarely any hard deadlines or broadcast production schedules, for the simple reason that most of the productions were never seen in primetime evening viewing hours on commercial broadcast television. Instead, they were broadcast in morning hours, when there was little commercial demand for airtime, and otherwise they fell into the category of educational films, which meant they were shown in educational institutions and on local educational television channels.
The critical variable for these productions was script approval. Scripts were written in English and revised many times, with a focus on the words of the narration, with visuals being secondary. Since the years of 1975 -88 were during the Cold War, both DPI and UNTV employed staff members whose primary function was to anticipate superpower sensitivities on any given subject, and any subject that the superpowers could not agree on was generally taboo. In practice, this meant that major events such as the Korean War could not be mentioned at all.
Stylistically, all these films featured Grierson Direct Address narration, so once the written text was vetted and approved, language versions could be made in the official UN languages of English, French, Spanish and Arabic. One of the limitations of this approach is that, if directors wanted to have the subjects of the film speak for themselves, or use any voice other than that the narrator, these voices would have to be dubbed, since subtitles were discouraged. As a result, most of the UNTV documentaries from this period had few voices other than that of the omniscient narrator who was, by default, the official voice of the United Nations.
The following Analysis of a documentary in the Man Builds, Man Destroys series – Nor Any Drop to Drink – serves as a stylistic illustration of a typical UNTV production at that time:
IV.7.1 Analysis: Nor Any Drop to Drink (1975) 9
As mentioned, this documentary was part of what the UN Audiovisual Library called “a major UN series of 30 films dealing with our global environment and what man is doing to it,” produced by UNTV for American educational distribution after the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Americans Peter Hollander and Joe O’ Brien served as Executive Producer and Producer/Director, respectively. Representatives for the New York State Education Department Bureau of Mass Communications served as consultants, and handled all primary distribution to educational television networks.
The first thing we see is the logo for the UN Environmental Campaign, along with the title MAN BUILDS, MAN DESTROYS, and we hear what sounds like a snippet from American composer Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Then we hear the voice of the narrator, Ed King, informing us in omniscient third person that this film is part of: A series of programs about this planet, and what man is doing to it…
King’s American voice is bland, almost insipid, and the delivery conversational, almost deadpan. There is no sense of urgency or commitment to the subject matter.
We cut to a helicopter shot of Mexico City; with languid guitar music in the background, and we hear King continue: …Man is by nature a friend and foe of the environment… In Mexico City, the roll of a rubber ball points to a problem that man has created in his search for drinking
water…You get what you pay for – an old axiom that is still true today,,,
With the same languid guitar music in the background, we then cut to Africa, and see Africans building a water pipeline. King continues: … On the West Coast of Africa in Ghana, you get two things: pipes that bring pure water to villages for the first time, and, second, a water bill at the end of each month…
For the next 27 minutes, the film continues in this fashion, haphazardly juxtaposing scenes from around the world linked only by the same wall-to-wall monotone narration by King. There are no dramatic conflicts, and, above all, there is no sense of urgency. For example, while the narrator mentions the problem of pollution, we never see any of the potentially disastrous consequences of pollution. Instead, we see pretty pictures of flowing water, and hear the narrator telling us that water is important, and that we all need it.
At around 5:00, the film leaves Africa and we visit Southern California. For the first time, we hear individuals talking about their own water problems. However, at 6:41, before their stories can get interesting, narrator Ed King returns, backed by some television game show music, and to tells us about a Rand Corporation project to bring icebergs to Southern California as a source of fresh water.
At about 10:00, the narrator begins to talk about another California project – transforming ocean water into drinking water… Mr. King abruptly takes us back to describe water in Ghana, which apparently has a plentiful supply of fresh water but needs pipes to create a delivery system.
The film then transports us back to Mexico City, and we hear from a few Mexican officials about Mexico City’s serious water problems, which sound potentially interesting, but before we can get involved, the narrator returns to suddenly whisks us off to the American city of New Orleans, apparently for the sole reason of showing us the Mississippi River.
At 25:07, to the tune of the same languid guitar music as we heard in the beginning, Ed King calmly but somewhat alarmingly concludes: …We are fast approaching a place in time where there may be plenty of water – but nary a drop to drink…
The film ends with a long shot of sunlight shimmering over an attractive, presumably unpolluted body of water.
Commentary: While the narrator of Nor Any Drop to Drink, Ed King, has a pleasant voice with good diction that might work for corporate promotions of pharmaceuticals designed to enhance sleep, Mr. King’s voice lacks the sense of urgency or drama required to engage an audience on an important environmental issue like drinking water. Since we hear his voice from beginning to end for almost 29 minutes, this is a factor. More important, however, since one of the premises of this dissertation is that successful documentary requires strong narrative content, the absence of any discernible narrative structure is a critical flaw in Nor Any Drop to Drink. Finally, the fact that this documentary was produced in an anachronistic documentary style more than three decades after Churchill’s Island raises questions about the creative management of UNTV at that time. While the Grierson Direct Action Narrative style might have worked for American motion picture audiences used to watching newsreels in motion picture theatres during World War II, thirty years later the style seems dated and anachronistic.
IV.7.2. Comparison of Churchill’s Island and Nor Any Drop to Drink
Let us now compare these two institutional documentaries using some standard questions for evaluating documentary to provide a structure for the comparison:
· The first is: what is at stake? In the case of the World War II film Churchill’s Island, it is clear from the first minute or so that it is the future of England – and, by extension, the English people – that is at stake. In the case of Nor Any Drop to Drink, what is at stake is not clear at all. The film never shows the consequences of severe water problems, like droughts, starvation and disease. As a result, Nor Any Drop to Drink lacks any sense of urgency. In short, this documentary lacks a coherent dramatic narrative.
· A second basic question is: Why should we care? In the case of Churchill’s Island, the film introduces us to sympathetic English civilians, and juxtaposes them with the German soldiers preparing to invade England. This is an old trick used by Alfred Hitchcock and others – show appealing, innocent people, threatened by a menacing external force – and the spectator will generally sympathize with the people being menaced – provided they are appealing and innocent enough, and the external threat is ominous enough. In Nor Any Drop to Drink, however, there are no innocent civilians to identify with, nor are any menacing external forces shown. If the film showed the destructive effects of contaminated water emanating from, say, the slaughterhouses run by a multinational corporation on, say, the children of a community, and then showed the citizens of the community uniting to protect their children, there would be a potentially engaging story to follow. The bottom line, however, is that there must be a good reason to care.
· Finally, there is the basic question of the Narrator’s Voice. Most documentary producers know that the quality of a narrator’s voice can make or break a film. If the voice lacks appeal, most spectators will quickly turn off, regardless of the quality of the narration being read. On the other hand, if the spectator likes the narrator’s voice, the spectator may forgive deficiencies in the script or the film itself. In short, a well-trained actor’s voice with the appropriate timbre for the project is an invaluable commodity – and finding the right voice for a narration can be as important as casting the right person in the lead role. As previously noted, Lorne Greene, narrator of Churchill’s Island, had a voice of such legendary quality that it earned the industry nickname of The Voice of Doom, and he was an inspired choice for Churchill’s Island.
IV.7.3. Analysis of UNTV Productions from 1975-88
To examine the creative decision-making process at UNTV at that time more closely, let us apply Thomas Elsaesser’s analytic model for industrial film production to the production of the United Nations Thirtieth Anniversary film, To Be Thirty ( 1975), the official film for International Year of the Refugee, Footnotes to a War ( 1980) and the official film for International year of Shelter for the Homeless, Shelter for the Homeless ( 1988).
IV.7.4. Production Analysis :To Be Thirty
Commissioner (Auftrag): In 1975, the author was offered his first assignment for UNTV in 1975 as co-writer/director with the late Steve Whitehouse of the United Nations 30th Anniversary film To Be Thirty. With North American youth as the target audience, our assignmen t was to create a short film (c. 13 minutes) on how the United Nations had changed along with the rest of the world since the end of World War II. At first, it seemed like a great opportunity. However, while the UN Film Library turned out to a treasure trove of rare historic footage from around the world, Steve and I soon discovered that, thanks to the afore-mentioned Cold War politics, the film was a political minefield.
1976 was the 30th Anniversary of the 1946 founding of the United Nations, and then UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim had decided that the UN should produce a film to commemorate the event; he then ordered Genichi Akatani, Director of Public Information, to get UNTV to produce a short documentary that would show how the UN had changed in the 30 years since its official creation in 1946. This was not an unusual request; UNTV had produced many documentaries to commemorate important dates in UN history in the past.
What was unusual, however, was the specific instruction that a North American youth audience be the primary target audience for the film. Akatani passed the assignment on to Director of Radio/Visual Services, Marcel Martin, who then assembled a production team, consisting of Senior Producers Gilbert Lauzun and Edward Magruder Jones. Together, they decided to entrust the project to two young newcomers – author Ted Folke as freelance writer/director and co-writer Steve Whitehouse, who worked for ECOSOC -The UN Council on Economic and Social Affairs – with veteran in-house editor David Sherman ostensibly in charge of the two young externals. Since UNTV productions at that time were almost exclusively produced in-house by one of the writer/directors on permanent contract with UNTV, this was a major departure from standard UNTV practice; unlike most American corporations and advertising agencies, UNTV never sought competitive bids from commercial production houses for projects.
The fact that the production of To Be Thirty had no budget for travel outside New York might have been a reason for the lack of interest from permanent staff members accustomed to leisurely international travel on their documentary productions. From the start, To Be Thirty was officially designed to be a compilation film using archival material from the extensive in-house UN Film Library, which had material from around the world dating back to 1946. As a result, any live shooting for the production was to be limited to the New York City.
Reason (Anlass): The goal of the production, as expressed by UNSG Kurt Waldheim, was to explain the changing role of the United Nations in the world to a North American youth audience. As previously noted, the targeting of a specific audience was unusual for UNTV.
However, given the climate of overt hostility towards the United Nations in New York in 1975 as evidenced by negative press and even by a few bomb threats against the UN Secretariat itself, this focus on the North American youth audience made some sense. However, even if UNTV succeeded in producing a documentary that would appeal to the intended audience, the big question was how that intended audience would be reached, since UNTV documentaries were rarely shown on American broadcast television. Chief of Distribution Daphne Brooke-Landis was content to use the existing method of distribution; prints of the finished film would be sent to UN Information Centers around the world, to be distributed locally to nearby countries.
Use (Addressat): Since this is an analysis of the UNTV creative process in 1975, a brief chronicle of the journey from the original assignment to the final product might be relevant
here. This will be a reflexive first-person chronicle, written from the perspective of the writer/director, who is also the author of this dissertation:
When producers Gilbert Lauzun and Edward Magruder Jones first met with us in the spring of 1975, they told us we were going to make a compilation film of 13 minutes with a third person Voice-of-God narration in the classic institutional John Grierson tradition; Steve Whitehouse, who had had news broadcast experience in his native New Zealand and Hong Kong, would be the narrator.
To freshen up the stock footage we got from the UN library, we were asked to shoot new images of the UN Secretariat There was no mention of a schedule, with the understood assumption being that the film had to be completed and approved well before the 30th anniversary of the United Nations in 1976.They then gave us a shopping list of important historical events to cram into the 13 minute film, and the meeting was over.
As soon as Steve and I had a chance to review this shopping list, we knew we had a big problem of content. For example, while many events were on the list, major events like the Korean and Vietnam Wars were completely off-limits, which made it all but impossible to deliver a linear historical narrative of the past 30 years with any credibility. And, of course, there was the old problem of style – both Steve and I knew we would not be winning any young North American hearts and minds by boring them to death.
After a weekend of brain storming, we came up with the following solution to the content problem: start with the one historic event everyone could agree on – the Peoples Republic of China acceptance as a member of the United Nations. Otherwise, we decided to ignore the shopping list altogether. As far as style was concerned, Steve and I both wanted to abandon the anachronistic UN Griersonian Direct Address narration and instead create an impressionistic, stream-of-conscious narration that dealt with emotional realities, rather than historical facts.
This narration would be delivered by a fictitious UN employee who was a real person with thoughts, concerns and doubts about the world and the role of the United Nations in that world; we realized that while we couldn’t be honest about real events, we could be honest about feelings, hopes and concerns. To make our hero someone whom the audience could relate to, we decided to show him driving his motorcycle to work in New York City on his birthday in a depressed state due to his personal 30- year old crisis. We also carefully avoided any mention of the United Nations for the first few minutes, since we knew that many in our intended youth audience would tune out if they suspected it was a UN production.
In short, our goal was to make a film that looked and sounded completely different from anything the UN had ever made. Given the intended target audience, we knew music would be a critical ingredient. I contacted an old friend who worked with the popular English group Pink Floyd and was thrilled they unexpectedly gave us the rights to their hit record Dark Side of the Moon for free. At that time, Dark Side of the Moon was reportedly the best-selling album in the history of the music industry, so suddenly we had a spectacular contemporary soundtrack with the best-selling recording in recent history– and cool visual music that was a radical departure from the soporific classical music favored by some of our more experienced staff colleagues.
To compliment this spectacular soundtrack, we knew we needed some powerful visuals, so we searched for ways to make our protagonist’s New York commute visually interesting. When we discovered we could get a new Bell Jet helicopter with pilot for free from the New York City Mayor’s office to provide aerial coverage of our protagonist’s commute, we started making a storyboard with Ivan Stoynov, the best cinematographer in UNTV. Ivan, who had learned his craft at Italy’s famed Centro Sperimentale gave a quality visual look to all the new footage we shot in New York. Most of the shots show our hero riding towards us in New York City traffic, and were shot with long lenses from the rear of a station wagon with deflated tires; the biggest challenge was finding enough pavement without potholes to ensure smooth shots, so our hero’s route from Brooklyn to the United Nations was a triumph of artistic license over geography. Ivan also found a way to make all the helicopter shots smooth and dream-like by shooting in slow motion, so that footage surpassed our wildest expectations.
Thanks to strong creative support from our boss Marcel Martin, our producer Gilbert Lauzun, and the entire team, the pre-production period and the two weeks of shooting in New York went smoothly. While we were shooting, editor David Sherman was in the selecting the best shots from past productions in the UN Film Library, and the film began to take shape. David was a brilliant editor well versed in the contents of the UN Film Library, and, thanks to Steve’s keen knowledge of the United Nations, we managed to avoid stepping on many of the political landmines in our path.
For example, in 1975, relations between the USSR and China were tense; Steve knew the Russians would be unhappy that we had chosen to highlight China’s 1972 entry to the UN, so he arranged with some resident Soviet friends to get some rare footage of a World War II victory celebration in Red Square that had special significance for Russian viewers, and a potential problem was averted.
When it was finished. the film was well received by all our resident political experts, as well as by all our UN bosses, including UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. and released with only a few minor changes. To Be Thirty was a dramatic departure from conventional UNTV institutional fare and proceeded to win many prizes, eventually becoming the most popular UN film ever, being shown around the world in over 15 different languages. Ironically, our only real problems proved to be internal. Some of our more senior UNTV colleagues who were not involved in the production did not seem to like the film; it took some time for me to understand that Steve and I had committed the unforgivable sin of making them look bad in the eyes of our ultimate employers – the United Nations General Assembly, who naturally wondered why UNTV was not making more films like To Be Thirty..
An old adage in creative work and sports is “never break up a winning team” and successful teams are usually kept together and nurtured. However, such was not the case at UNTV; despite our success, Steve and I were never asked to work together again. Nonetheless, we worked together on some projects outside the UN, and remained good friends until his death in 2018.
IV.7.5. Analysis: To Be Thirty12
The opening shot of To Be Thirty is a low angle shot of a motorcycle in the foreground parked on a New York City street. It is a sunny spring day, and we hear the diegetic sound of kids playing off-camera. A young man in a business suit walks towards us carrying a briefcase and a full-face motorcycle helmet. He is out of focus as he approaches from across the street, and we get only a glimpse of his face as he gets on the motorcycle. As he puts on his helmet and inserts his key in the ignition, we see only that he is a handsome Caucasian male of about 30.
We cut to a close-up of the kick starter as he starts the engine, and we suddenly hear the dramatic opening of Pink Floyd’s song Us and Them. We then see a series of shots of our protagonist as he rides towards us, accompanied by Us and Them. All of the shots are taken with a long lens, tracking backwards as he rides from Brooklyn to Manhattan. When he crosses the Brooklyn Bridge, we see him as he enters the frame from the left and exits frame right.
We next see him on the busy streets of downtown Manhattan – this time in close-up. The camera is still tracking backwards with him. At 1:13, he starts an internal monologue and, from the sound of his voice, he seems troubled: …30 years old… What a way to start a birthday- there must be more to turning 30 than going to work!... I can’t say I feel so different – though I suppose people are going to see me as being different… As if I knew where I was at, and where I was going…which is absurd, because I don’t know any better than the next person…
As he says “which is absurd”, we cut to a long shot from a helicopter as our protagonist rides up the East River Drive towards the United Nations, which comes into frame at 1:38 as our protagonist says: …Like when I say where I work – at the United Nations – I’m expected to know where the world is at and where the world is going…
As the UN Secretariat fills the frame, our protagonist disappears, and the music builds to a crescendo as the helicopter-mounted camera takes a 360degree shot of the iconic UN building while we see the Main Title: To Be Thirty is superimposed. We next see our protagonist riding into past an idyllic flowing fountain in the UN Courtyard and then heading into the UN Garage. At 2:18, his Voice-Over continues: … I do know one thing: the world’s got a lot of problems… And after a few years here, I’ve given up thinking the UN is selling any easy answers…
We see UN staff from behind passing through the revolving doors to the main building, and
at 2:31, our protagonist, now on foot, follows them into the building with his helmet in his hand:
…So, where does that leave the UN? After all, it was one of my parents’ generation’s most cherished hopes…Is that all it’s turned out to be – a string of hopes?
We see a huge pendulum in the visitor’s lobby, surrounded by visitors. He continues: … Yet, it’s amazing how many visitors still come here. To look around, to wonder. And now the UN is over 30, and it looks like we are both in the same boat… People are going to be looking over our shoulders, expecting a lot. As they did when the UN was founded…
At 3:00, we cross-fade to a black-and-white Second World War victory celebration in London – a line of soldiers and civilians doing a popular dance called The Lambeth Walk. Our motorcyclist speaks: …Peace was a precious thing then – especially for those who had fought for it. And they set up the UN in the hope that peace would be preserved…
We cut to a black-and-white World War II victory celebration in Red Square in Moscow to Russian music, and we see joyous civilians celebrating with soldiers with fireworks in the background. At 3:30, we make a hard cut to color footage of tanks advancing into the frame from the Egyptian-Israeli War. We hear our protagonist continue: …But the conflicts still go on…
For the next 10 minutes, the film shows some of the major problems confronting the planet– natural disasters, famine, disease, and the environment – and describes how the UN is trying to cope with them. The film does not attempt to paint a rosy picture; quite to the contrary, it tells us the world is facing some formidable challenges, and that the UN only can serve as a vehicle for confronting some of these challenges when the countries of the world agree to do something. Towards the end, we see shots of the earth from outer space, and our protagonist leaves us with this sobering thought: …A small and finite planet – but its all we have…A far from perfect world – only too accurately reflected in a far from perfect United Nations… We’re all here now – because nothing else has worked…
The film ends with a tracking shot of the flags of the world waving in a stiff New York breeze, followed by a long, slow helicopter shot moving in on the UN Secretariat from the North, accompanied by the Pink Floyd song Eclipse. As the helicopter circles the building, we see the closing credits.
Commentary: By all accounts, To Be Thirty was a big hit with audiences around the world. The film was reportedly translated into 15 different languages, and won prestigious awards, including a The Vatican Special Prize for Films Dealing with Economic and Social Affairs. Perhaps equally important, there were no controversies caused by the film, and it remained in circulation for well over a decade. However, the question of whether or not it reached a North American youth audience with the desired message is more difficult to answer.
In 1976, broadcast media in the United States was dominated by large commercial television networks who, safe to say, did not find documentaries commercial, and therefore did not show them. There were few alternatives; cable television was in its infancy, and CNN was not founded until 1980. At that time, UNTV was devoting most of its capacity to producing the environmental series titled Man Builds, Man Destroys, which was only shown in the mornings on commercial stations like WABC in New York, and distributed to universities and other educational outlets.
The natural alternative was PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, a non-commercial public broadcaster which did produce and broadcast documentaries on social and political issues; however, by the mid 1970’s. the United Nations had reportedly become so controversial in the United States that all UNTV productions had been banned from PBS broadcast as “propaganda.”
Unlike most large corporations, the United Nations Department of Public Information never invested in marketing studies in an attempt to determine the success or failure of a given public information campaign or production. In 1976, the only metric used to measure the success of any UNTV production was the number of prints ordered from the UN Information Centers located around the world. Since promotion by these UN Information Centers was rarely ever coordinated, or even encouraged by UNDPI in New York, except on an ad hoc basis, it is difficult to determine the success or failure of any UNTV production. As a result, while an international demand was documented though print orders, there is no way to ascertain or even guess the size of the North American audience for To Be Thirty. However, what with the number of language versions produced (an estimated 15 language versions), and the longevity of the film in the UN Catalogue (more than 10 years), along with word-of-mouth, it seems safe to conclude that To Be Thirty was a success for UNTV .13
The author believes the relative success of the film can be attributed to three factors:
· An engaging impressionistic style, thanks to a credible first-person narrative
· Unusually honest content, talking about UN failures as well as successes
· An internationally popular soundtrack performed by world famous band Pink Floyd
Despite this apparent success, however, the film did not seem to have much of an impact on
UNTV product for the next few years. The films produced by UNTV continued to employ third person, omniscient male Voice-of-God narrations featuring one of several favorite narrators.
Likewise, even though there were many excellent musical recordings by prominent artists who probably would have been happy to allow their music to be used free-of-charge, most of the producers continued to use the same music as previous productions. It was not until my next UNTV assignment four years later that I discovered how entrenched the resistance to change was at UNTV.
IV.7.6. Production Analysis: FOOTNOTES TO A WAR14
Commissioner (Auftrag): The United Nations has many different agencies, but none of them has the production capacity of UNTV.As a result, if an agency had a film to produce, the agency would approach UNTV like a client, and offer to fund travel and other expenses if UNTV would provide a team and produce a film on the subject in question from concept through to final cut.The UN agency would provide research, expertise and location assistance, and the UNTV team would shoot on location and then do the post-production at UNTV in the basement of the UN Secretariat in New York, with the UN agency representatives serving as consultants.
In 1980, The United Nations Refugee Agency, perhaps better known by the acronym UNHCR, came to UNTV a request for a documentary on refugee resettlement for International Year of the Refugee. At that time, tens of thousands of refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam had fled from their homes and were living in temporary camps in Thailand waiting for UNHCR to process their cases and either find them new homes as political refugees in other countries or send them somewhere else as economic migrants. UNHCR wanted a film showing how some refugees had been re-settled in Canada and Germany.
UNTV accepted the project, and gave the assignment to a director with a family background in Italian cinema named Simone diBagno. A true cinephile who, no matter how humdrum the assignment, always wanted to create true cinema art, Simone was often mocked by his more pedestrian colleagues in UNTV, especially when his lofty aspirations had gotten him into trouble on the editing table.
Reason (Anlass): UNHCR wanted to produce a film which would promote understanding of how people become refugees, and explain the difference between a refugee and an economic immigrant. They also wanted to increase receptivity towards refugees in potential host countries like Germany and Canada, and International Year of the Refugee provided a pretext for making such a film. To do this, they sent Simone and his team to the refugee camps in Thailand and then helped him find a Cambodian woman to follow to her new home in Canada, and a Cambodian girl to follow to her new home in Germany. While this might seem like a straight forward story, there were major political obstacles. For example, Simone was expressly forbidden from mentioning the conflicts these people were fleeing from, as well as the names of any of the countries involved. In short, he could not explain why these people had left their homes and families to live in decrepit refugee camps in Thailand, and this inability to provide basic facts made telling the story in traditional documentary fashion difficult, if not completely impossible. Simone found himself painted into a corner, and my old producer from To Be Thirty, Gilbert Lauzun, suggested bringing me in a script doctor to figure out a way to tell the story. Simone agreed, and I joined the team with editor Mark Robbins in the spring of 1980.
Use (Addressat): Again, a brief chronicle of the journey from the original assignment to the final product seems relevant here. This will be a reflexive first-person chronicle, written from the perspective of the writer, who is also the author of this dissertation:
I took a look at the material with Simone and editor Mark Robbins, and, with the lessons from To Be Thirty still fresh in my mind, I wondered if we should instead try to recreate the emotional experience of being a refugee by having a refugee tell us the entire story from his or her first-person perspective. In that way, we could re-create the emotional reality of being a refugee while avoiding the specifics of how these individuals shown became refugees, which seemed impossible without mentioning Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam.
Simone agreed. The first challenge was finding someone who could tell the story; after a lengthy search, Mark found visuals of a Laotian medic named Lin Piao who had been working in the refugee camps of Thailand for several years, and was still waiting with his family for his case to be processed. In short, like most of the other refugees, he was in a state of limbo. While his situation suited the narrative we wanted to tell, this put us at odds with our two senior producers, who clearly wanted images of the refugees Simone had followed to Germany and Canada – in short, a happy ending. We, on the other hand, felt strongly that this was not a feel-good kind of story – after all, even though we could not show or mention it, millions of people had been killed. As a result, we were adamant about returning to Lin Piao in the Thai camp at the end, and reminding the audience he was still there – along with most of the other refugees. To enable Lin Piao to tell the stories of those who were resettled, we decided that, as a medic, he could credibly have met the other principles, and could therefore tell their stories.
This bit of dramatic license technically made the film a docudrama rather than a documentary, but Simone, Mark and I felt that this was the best solution to a difficult problem. Unfortunately, our American executive producer Peter Hollander clearly felt this was a terrible solution, and the dispute went on for weeks. Finally, Peter gave up, shouting,” If this film is going to work, it will have to be the best narration written in the history of the UN!”
Peter didn’t know I was married to an Ethiopian refugee at the time, and that I had effectively been doing research day and night for months. It took us a while to find a good Asian narrator who spoke excellent English with the appropriate accent and inflection, but we eventually did find one named Lu Yu in Hong Kong.
IV.7.8. Analysis: Footnotes to a War
The film opens with a long shot of cloud-shrouded mountain in central Thailand. We hear rolling thunder, and the camera tilts down through the clouds until we finally see a refugee camp at the bottom of the mountain. When the camera stops, we hear a loud thunderclap, and then see the main title in News Gothic Bold: Footnotes to a War
We see the heavy rains of the monsoon falling on the destitute inhabitants of a rural Thai village, and we hear the narrator, Lin Piao: …For our ancestors, the monsoon was a blessing from the heavens… For us in the refugee camps of Thailand, the monsoon is a plague. A plague with a harvest of misery and disease…
We see the patients of a crowded and primitive medical ward in the refugee camp. Lin Piao continues: …Each day we reap few fruits of the monsoon. Malaria. Dysentery. Encephalitis. And for some- death…
We see an Asian medic walking towards us through the patients. We hear him say: …My name is Lin Piao. I was once a soldier trained to fight. Now I am a medic, trained to heal…
With the identity of the narrator established, we are then introduced to the major activity of the refugees: waiting, and hoping to be selected for resettlement and a new life in some far away country. Lin Piao speaks softly, with an Asian inflection, but his words reveal mixed feelings.
He has already spent a few years in the camp, and he is happy that at least his family is intact, and that they are safe and have enough to eat. Then he says: …Even a full belly cannot satisfy the hunger for a home and a country to call one’s own…
He starts to reminisce about some of those who have been resettled – a little girl who ended up in Germany with her family, and a woman who ended up in Canada. In both cases, in spite of the generosity of their hosts, we can see the cultural transition is difficult for the children, and painful for the adults.At the end, we return to the camps, where Lin Piao is checking up on a new wave of arrivals. As we see him working, he comments: …Those seeking some golden opportunities may be disappointed… But anything would be better than remaining here as footnotes to a war…
We pull back from the rain swept camp into a long shot. Then a crawl tells us how many refugees have been resettled, and how many are still living in the camps in Thailand.
Commentary: Footnotes to A War was the first UNTV film to ever win an American Film Festival Blue Ribbon, and was very much appreciated by our clients at UNHCR, as well as by UN leaders such as the late former Secretary General Kofi Annan, who personally selected the film for screening at the Venice Film Festival , and told us it was his favorite UN film. Our boss Marcel Martin, also let us know he liked the film. Unfortunately, his feelings were apparently not shared by our American colleagues at UNTV. The reasons for this antipathy have always been something of a mystery.
In terms of content, we had carefully followed the guidelines given, and avoided mentioning Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. In terms of form, however, we chose to make one of our subjects the narrator, in the hope of making a more honest film. This docudrama format allowed us to circumvent some of the political restrictions imposed by the UN, and made the films more engaging by injecting emotional realities that the spectator could identify with. In addition, the docudrama format made the films generic, and gave them a much longer shelf life than a traditional documentary format would have.11 In retrospect, after a recent long discussion with editor Mark Robbins, I can only conclude that these American colleagues found our search for new narrative techniques and formats threatening because we successfully showed new narrative techniques they had been unwilling to consider themselves.
I realize now that without the active support of Radio Visual Services Director Marcel Martin, we would probably have never been able to make the film at all. Thanks to his background with the Canadian Film Board, Marcel seemed to have a better understanding than our American colleagues of what we were trying to do, and the value of his support became apparent in our next production after he had left the UN.
IV.7.9. Production Analysis: Shelter for the Homeless
Commissioner (Auftrag): My next production as Simone’s screenwriter was less successful; in retrospect, however, it serves as a textbook example of much that was wrong with UNTV production at the time – both in terms of form and content. The assignment was to make the official documentary for the United Nations Year of Shelter for the Homeless, with the UN agency Habitat for Humanity as the official client. There were problems from the beginning.
Among other things, the political climate had changed significantly. 1988 was the last year of the Ronald Reagan presidency in the United States, and it was no secret that, unlike President Jimmy Carter before him, President Reagan had little use for the UN. Indeed, unlike any previous American administration, the Reagan administration had adopted a far more pro-active approach towards the agencies of the UN – including the Department of Public Information. While we normally expected this kind of interference from the Russians, we surprised to find it coming from their Cold War adversaries, the Americans.
Reason (Anlass): As was the case with all UNTV films, our instructions were to emphasize solutions rather than problems, and we did our best to find a typical UNTV approach that would satisfy all parties. In keeping with the traditionally acceptable UNTV formula of showing examples from both the developing and developed world, Simone shot in Rio de Janeiro, Sri Lanka, and New York City, with an emphasis throughout on solutions, rather than identifying possible causes.
We had also planned to shoot sequences of homeless people in New York, but when Simone returned from production in Brazil, we learned from Senior Producer Peter Hollander that no images of American homeless would be allowed in the film at all. Simone and I were shocked; in 1988, due to rampant real estate speculation, there were homeless people openly sleeping on the streets of New York, so the problem was hardly invisible. In addition, Simone had been planning to film former American President Jimmy Carter working with Habitat for Humanity in the Bronx to refurbish slums, so we felt we had already shown sensitivity to the American sensibilities. When we got no support at all from Yasushi Akashi, the new Director of the Department of Public Information. we realized we were on our own.
Use ( Addressat): While we were ready to compromise in traditional UN fashion, neither Simone nor I were ready to promote the myth that homelessness existed as a problem only in the developing world. Since we also all agreed that this blatant political interference was a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, I decided to leak the dispute to the press. To do so, I had to go on the record with my name in a New York newspaper. When Mr. Akashi denied my charges of censorship, we thought that we had lost the war. However, the tide shifted miraculously the following day when the American ambassador to the UN confirmed to a New York Times reporter that he had given UN DPI instructions “not to show American homeless unless we emphasized that in America the homeless have freedom of choice…”
The American Ambassador’s statement implying that homeless Americans were homeless by choice generated a lot of American media attention , and, thanks to the subsequent political scandal, Shelter For the Homeless got more far media attention than it cinematically deserved, and it actually won prizes at the Karlovy Vary Festival, as well as an award from something called the Pyongyang Film Festival in North Korea. My personal award for my act of whistle-blowing was to become persona non grata at UNTV for more than a decade. I didn’t mind, since I was well aware that I had broken UN rules.
IV.7.10. Analysis: Shelter for the Homeless15
This 27-minute documentary opens with a scenic montage of a glorious sunrise over Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay. As the sun rises, we see the iconic profile of Corcovado Mountain in the warm red light, and then a deserted Copacabana Beach Boardwalk. An idyllic synthesized musical score fades in behind the touristic postcard images. We cut then to people still sleeping on a street in Ipanema, one of Rio de Janeiro’s most upscale districts. As we see a mother sleeping with her baby. Narrator Norman Rose begins to speak: …You can see them everywhere…For some people, they are invisible- outcasts to be shunned. For others, they are tragedies – victims of social injustice...
In close-up, we see one of our protagonists sleeping on a piece of cardboard– Carmelito, a boy about 10 years old. Rose continues: …But whatever one’s point of view, the plight of the millions of homeless people around the world is an undeniable fact of life…
The synthesized musical score turns ominous as we pull back to a medium shot as Carmelito wakes up and washes his face in a bucket of water in front of a grocery story. The narrator continues as we see Carmelito begin his day’s work – helping motorists park their cars. Rose says: …Carmelito is one of the millions of children who live, sleep and work in the streets of Latin America…He spends his days helping people park their cars in Ipanema – one of Rio de Janeiro’s most exclusive neighborhoods.On a good day, Carmelito will make enough to eat – if he is lucky…
We see a motorist handing Carmelito a few bills…
The film continues in this style, showing us glimpses of the life of Dona Maria, an older woman living in a shack in Paovonzinho, a shantytown on the hills above Copacabana Beach. We see the white sands and the blue waters of Copacabana Beach down below.
Norman Rose says: …Dona Maria has the best view in Rio – but she pays a different price. In the 30 years she has lived here illegally, Dona Maria has had to do without water, electricity, or sanitary facilities. She shares her tiny one room shack with 14 members of her family, and spends her days baby-sitting for her 6 grandchildren while the rest of her family is out looking for work… Both Dona Maria and Carmelito are homeless – victims of inadequate shelter…
We see Dona Maria with her grandchildren, talking about her life. The film then shows how the city of Rio is trying to improve the lives of people in Paovonzinho in different ways – by building a tram to provide transportation up the steep slopes, and, perhaps most important, by giving the residents land tenure, and making them legal owners of their properties so they have some security and can get credit at financial institutions.
Turning to the problem of street children like Carmelito, the film then shows how street children are rounded up and sent to detention centers with other street children outside the city. While Norman Rose does not say it explicitly, the film clearly implies that these detention centers could become the unintended training grounds for a violent new generation of Brazilian youth, and that there are no easy solutions for the problems of urban homeless.
At 14:18, the film then moves to Sri Lanka, to tell a story of rural homelessness in the developing world with the story of a poor farmer who wants to build a house large enough for his extended family. A government program provides him with the basic tools, and he does the rest.
Throughout, the narrator continues to drive the story, with only a few token comments by the subjects or any of those trying to help them. We are never engaged in their lives, because we never have a chance to get to know any of them. Norman Rose’s narration does not help. While he had a rich baritone voice famous in New York commercial circles as the original Voice of God, his delivery is authoritative, omniscient and patronizing.
In short, Norman Rose’s narration in this film is almost a parody of the Voice of God; while Mr. Rose, like Lorne Greene in Churchill’s Island, had an excellent voice, there is no sense of urgency in Shelter for the Homeless. Since there is nothing of importance is at stake, there is no conflict or drama which might unify the film.
Commentary: For me, the film was both a political and an aesthetic failure. A fundamental rule of documentary is to present the viewer with accurate content, and Shelter for the Homeless failed to do this. All documentaries should be seen in their social and political context, and, for anyone who had lived in New York City during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the notion that homelessness was a problem only in developing countries was a cruel joke.
In the 1980’s, there seemed to be homeless people living on the streets in all the cities of America, and the reasons were clear to anyone who had been paying attention: mental hospitals were throwing their patients onto the streets, and real estate speculation had led to an astronomic rise in rents. This was the story we were not allowed to tell at all.
The second failure was aesthetic; more than half a century after John Grierson had started making documentaries with Direct Action narration, and more than two decades after Direct Action narration had become an anachronism in the industry, we had not only made a documentary with a major factual misrepresentation, but a documentary dominated by a patronizing Voice of God narration.
Simone and I had hoped we could convince our producers that, like Footnotes to a War, the film required a creative approach to be credible for the intended audience, but this time we had no champions. Marcel Martin had left UNTV, and his successor Georges LeClerc did not want to get involved; as noted previously, the political climate had changed significantly during the 8 years of the Reagan presidency. This complete lack of support from our UNTV producers and senior managers caused me to lose respect for their professional integrity…
IV.7.11. United Nations Television and the National Film Board
As previously noted, United Nations Television was created in the wake of World War II after John Grierson created The National Film Board of Canada. Initially, the films being produced by both institutions were understandably similar in both form and content; many of the first UNTV directors had been trained under Grierson at the NFB, and there were close ties between the two institutions. However, whatever the initial similarities, the policies and mandate of the NFB underwent profound changes in the turbulent 1960’s, as Canadian media scholar Zoe Druick explains:
For the NFB, the most important policy shift in the 1960’s was organized under the banner of Challenges for Change and Societe Nouvelle. The new program, which was developed in tandem with the new social policies, was based on the argument that participation in media projects could empower disenfranchised groups and that media representation might bring about improved political representation. In 1967, the NFB submitted a proposal for ‘a program of film activities in the area of poverty and change…16
In practice, this meant developing styles and formats which would give a voice to the intended disenfranchised groups, which included indigenous peoples, and women; in the following decades, The Challenges for Change program radically transformed both the form and content of CFB documentary production, and kept the CFB in the vanguard of international institutional documentary production. By the 1980’s, these changes had become part of the CFB institutional mandate. Zoe Druick elaborates:
Years ago, the NFB not only led but was almost alone in the service of specialized audiences…The challenge of the eighties is simply this: to discover new ways of reflecting the cultural maturity of our country using the new communications technologies so that the Board may continue to render a service to the nation as a whole by its traditional means of serving separately and specially, the individual parts…17
By comparison, UNTV remained mired in a World War II media philosophy and aesthetic.
IV.1.8. United Nations Television, 1988-2008
IV. 8.1. Background
The end of the Cold War had a profound effect on the United Nations. Suddenly the old political mine fields vanished, and there was a renewed sense of hope and optimism. Since the primary mandate of the United Nations had been to prevent World War III, now many felt it was time to broaden the scope of UN activities and find new ways to improve the quality of life for the people of the world. However, at UNTV, the mood was less euphoric. 1988, the Reagan administration had ordered massive budget cuts, which meant the termination of several veteran directors, and significantly less funds for production.
In addition, there were technical challenges in both production and distribution to deal with. Analog video technology had improved, and 16 mm technology was gradually being phased out in professional documentary production around the world. Likewise, the educational market for long form documentaries, so UNTV was forced to find new formats suitable for broadcast on the new phenomenon of Cable Television, or risk becoming completely irrelevant.
Georges Leclerc, Director of Radio/Visual Services from 1986-1993, attempted to solve this problem by eliminating the costly Man Builds, Man Destroys series, and instead creating the UN In Action series – in an early version with producer Claire Taplin, and later with Steve Whitehouse, who became Chief, UNTV in 1997 until his retirement in 2008. Radically different in both form and content from its predecessors, The UN In Action series allowed UNTV to produce corporate news stories on UN-related subjects with guaranteed international distribution through CNN, which had just become the first international satellite broadcaster.
In a 2017 interview, Steve Whitehouse described the origins of UN in Action:
…As far as regular output was concerned, we realized we had to adopt a new philosophy. Rather than trying to find a market/slots for 30-minute and 60-minute documentaries -especially when many broadcasters now wanted a series of 13 or 26 shows within their own national news programs, which are always among the highest rating programs in all countries. That was the origin of UN in Action...
Steve described the new production strategy in the field as “speedy and efficient “news-style shooting with the end products being 3-4 minutes in length to conform to the needs of news programs and all were shot in the field. The UN in Action programs were then produced in all the UN official languages and, thanks to the new distribution through CNN World Report, their combined audiences were hundreds of millions of actual viewers in scores of countries.
Regarding editorial philosophy, Steve commented:
…As far as I was concerned, the editorial philosophy was clear and elemental: we had an absolute responsibility to the public to show what the UN and its agencies were doing with the tax payers’ money, and we had stories to tell stories the audiences could not get from any other source...
The UN in Action programs dealt with topics such as population issues, peacekeeping, environmental stories, and humanitarian relief, and Steve dismissed any suggestion that UNTV was subjected to political pressures when he was Chief, UNTV:
…In my time we experienced virtually no editorial interference from the UN hierarchy. They just let us get on with it. We were not trying to compete editorially with independent news organization; we specialized in stories they were not covering. Over a span of more than 1,000 items over the years, I can count the times we had any editorial problems on the fingers of one hand...
IV.8.2. Analysis: Brazil: The Ethanol Revolution18
The UN in Action programs were generally short (c. 5 minute) documentary reportages on a UN Agency activity somewhere in the world, and were shot on location with an emphasis on how the UN Agency activity benefitted the local population. Here is an example from June, 2008, titled Brazil: The Ethanol Revolution; the reportage tells about how the bio-fuel, ethanol, is generating a revolution in renewable energy that could help reduce the world's thirst for oil, but is also adversely affecting the lives of the sugar cane cutters in the process. The reportage opens with a sequence of documentary shots of a Brazilian agricultural worker cutting sugar cane. An Anglophone news narrator sets the scene by just stating facts:…49 year-old Severino de Andrade works for Moema Mills, a large agribusiness company in Sao Paulo State in southeastern Brazil. From sugarcane, the company makes ethanol gasoline as a substitute for gasoline in Brazil. This is helping to reduce the harmful pollution which is changing the world’s climate. But despite his work, Severino and several hundreds of thousands of others may end up losing their jobs. Ironically, due to the success of their industry…
We then see Severino. He speaks Portuguese, with his voice overdubbed into English by another voice speaking Brazilian accented English:… I’m getting old and I don’t have an alternative. I hope to be able to find work elsewhere…
We see a Brazilian scientist working in a laboratory, and the Anglophone narrator introduces him:… Tadeo Andrade is a director at the country’s leading scientific and development center…
We see Tadeo Andrade speaking directly to the camera, his voice overdubbed into English by the voice with Brazilian accented English: …No other country has so much technology related to sugar cane: producing different plant varieties, growing, cutting for exporting, and all industrial processes related to sugar and alcohol production…
We see long shots of sugarcane being processed. The Anglophone narrator explains: …During the 1970’s, the Brazilian economy was hard hit the global oil embargo, and rising prices. The country’s military government launched a national program to reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil. It encouraged the production of ethanol plants, offering low interest loans to sugar companies, and subsidies to keep the price of sugar low…
We see shots of cars on Brazilian streets, and a motorist filling his gas tank. The Anglophone narrator continues:…The automobile industry responded quickly, and now widespread ethanol use has made Brazil a global leader in cutting down carbon emissions and oil imports at the same time…
We see a sequence of shots of machinery at a sugar mill making ethanol. The Anglophone narrator explains: Increases in demand for alternative fuel and an urgent need to address environmental concerns are fueling an international demand for Brazilian biofuels. During the first 6 months of 2007, the country’s ethanol exports shot up by 70 %...
We see machines harvesting sugar cane being operated by three workers. The narrator says: …This is the future of the industry. 50 % of the harvest at Moema Mills is now mechanized. The three workers who operate these machines can replace 60 cane cutters…
We see a cane cutter commenting on the situation in Portuguese, overdubbed into English:
…The mechanization process is here to stay. Its worrying to us. But we cane cutters are human machines. We are the beginning of the entire process…
We see a sequences of sugar cane field waste being systematically burned. The Anglophone narrator explains: …Traditionally, manual harvesting of sugar cane is aided by burning, which clears the plants’ serrated leaves and tops. The burning is carefully controlled… But this was not always the case. Fires themselves create pollution, and uncontrolled blazes have led to the destruction of forests and wildlife…State legislatures have set a deadline for stopping this practice, and by the year 2014, burning fields will no longer be permitted, and almost all of Sao Paulo’s sugar cane plantations will shift from manual to mechanized harvesting. This means cane cutters will no longer be needed…
We see a group of cane cutters working. The Anglophone narrator continues:…There are no guarantees that jobs will be found for each cutter. But there is awareness that large scale unemployment could lead to social chaos. Ricardo Brito Perreira is Moema Mills director…
We see a middle-aged Brazilian man with a sport jacker and a hard hat. As he speaks to us, his voice is overdubbed into English, by another voice speaking Brazilian accented English:
…We need social stability, and we need to create employment. The cutters will be absorbed in our future expansion. This is our responsibility – it’s not only up to the government and the unions. We have to do our part…
In a long shot, we see one of the new harvesting machines at work. Our Anglophone narrator concludes: …Brazil aims to double its current production of ethanol in 10 years. Many believe that the conversion of ethanol into a tradable commodity worldwide is crucial for lifting the developing world out of poverty. To balance environmental concerns and the redeployment of hundreds of thousands of cane cutters will be a major challenge for Brazilian society...
We cross fade to the UN in Action logo as the Anglophone narrator tells us over some low-key jazz music: This report was prepared by Chaim Litewski for the United Nations…
Commentary: Brazil: The Ethanol Revolution follows a standard international documentary news format for cable television. The off-screen narrator sets the scenes, introduces the characters, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Meanwhile, the characters introduced each have their own voices, and they all have a chance to comment on the action, and their roles in it. In less than 5 minutes, this short documentary conveys maximum content, and introduces the viewers to a subject they presumably know little about – ethanol. In addition, the absence of any direct promotion for the United Nations adds to credibility, while the narrative content is honest enough about the potential problems of mass unemployment caused by automation to give this short an edge, further adding to credibility.
In the author’s opinion, Brazil: The Ethanol Revolution represents a harmony of interesting narrative content with a form appropriate for the international global audience for the intended cable television distribution vehicle of CNN World Report, which normally showed several different stories produced by local production entities from around the world a in two-hour program. This flow of short documentary news stories produced in a variety of styles provides an ideal context for the UNTV message.
IV.8.3. Production Economics
The differences in the economics of producing as well as distributing the UN in Action series and previous UNTV series like Man Builds, Man Destroys were considerable. A half hour documentary like Nor Any Drop to Drink necessitated out-of-pocket expenses such as costly international travel for both research and production trips for the director and his three or four-man crew (plus equipment) to several different countries, in addition to the in-house expense of months of post-production with UNTV full-time staff.
A typical 5- minute UN in Action story was far cheaper to produce, since they generally involved travel to a single country to cover a story about a UN agency activity in that country, and travel expenses were reimbursed by UN Agencies, The team was usually two – director and cameraperson with a sound engineer hired locally. Stories were shot on Betacam cassettes, so there no boxes of film cans to ship, as well. In short, the collaboration between UNTV and CNN World Report was a happy marriage. According to Steve Whitehouse:
…UN in Action was well underway by the time CNN World Report started. We were one of the three organizations that contributed to the very first show. We made it a point of honor to contribute to every single show from that time onwards. Eventually there were, I think, up to 80 countries participating in CNN World Report. Its audience, although significant and prestigious, was smaller than the audience for the actual UN in Actions. Our excellent relationship with CNN kept us up the mark production-wise and we won a number of awards at their annual conferences...
In retrospect, one might say that the successful collaboration with CNN World Report was a high point for UNTV. The UN in Action programs were broadcast to millions of viewers around the world as regular features of CNN World Report. UNTV was able to project positive images of the UN and UN activities in credible, regular new items in more than 130 countries worldwide, at minimal cost to the institution of the United Nations.
IV.9. United Nations Television, 2009-2017
IV.9.1. Background
Chaim Litewski from Brazil, after working as a producer for UNTV from 1990 to 2008, succeeded Steve Whitehouse as Chief, UNTV, in 2008. In a 2019 interview, Chaim described his initial role at UNTV and his first assignments:
I was directly involved in publicizing the changes taking place inside and outside the organization. I produced widespread TV coverage in the areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian emergencies and human rights, promoting these issues through the production of long and short format videos, for distribution to worldwide broadcasters.
At first, Chaim continued the production schedule created by Steve Whitehouse, with the primary target for news being CNN World Report, a weekly 2-hour show that included contributions from The UN in Action series and other 150 global broadcasters. The UN in Action series helped to usher in what became known as developmental news. According to Chaim, these pieces had a long-shelf life and could be used as fillers or complement coverage.
Chaim described the format for the UN in Action programs as a character-based story-telling style, following a narrative formula consisting of problem-intervention-solution, and invariably told the story from the perspective of the beneficiary. These short features – produced in the Organization’s six official languages – were then sent to UNTV’s broadcasting partners worldwide, free-of-charge, on a monthly-basis, firstly via tape, and later on via digital transfer. While his first years were positive ones, Chaim said things changed dramatically after the Rwanda genocide:
…I happened to be in Rwanda during the genocide and this remains a significant trauma
in my life - both my parents were holocaust survivors. The war in the former Yugoslavia
and the failure in Somalia were subsequent low points, and the institution never really
recovered from these massive failures… Ever since, the UN has been going through a
tremendous identity crisis…18
When Chaim became Chief of UNTV in late 2008, he was committed to increase production by aiming at various target audiences – facilitated by the emergence of social media- and through institutional and broadcasting dissemination making sure that features were cut to various lengths and distributed through various outlets. UNTV 21st Century was Chaim’s major contribution to the UNTV repertoire. Unlike UN in Action, UNTV 21st Century was a professionally finished, digitally produced, magazine style show of c. 30 minutes with an internationally known presenter named Daljit Dhaliwal who presented each of several 10-minute feature stories from around the world. The program was the UNTV flagship, a signature program which was shown regularly for about a decade in more than 80 different countries.
IV.9.2. Analysis: UNTV 21STCentury Kinshasa’s Witch Children 19
This magazine style program opens with eye-catching, dynamic graphics and dramatic music featuring the title of UNTV 21st Century written in the fonts of languages from around the world. At 0:28, we hear the voice of the presenter – Daljit Dhaliwal, a news professional well known to Anglophone television audiences: …Coming up on 21st century…in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a strange and cruel ritual…
We see a Congolese boy undergoing an exorcism in a Kimbanguist temple in Kinshasa, and we see an exorcist pouring burning candle wax on his head. We hear the exorcist in voice-over:
…Sorcerers have cast a spell on this boy, so we have to sprinkle candle wax on him to
neutralize these spells…
We see Congolese boys playing football on the streets of Kinshasa, and we hear Daljit Dhaliwal again:
…The lives of tens of thousands of children are in danger…
We see the logo of the program again, and then we cut to a scene from Buenos Aires, where we see President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner leaving a bus. Daljit Dhaliwal continues:
…In Argentina, the poor girl and the president…
We see a little Argentinian girl writing a letter, and we hear her words in voice-over: …Dear Madam President, I want you to clean the river. The city is full of diseases, and it stinks!
We see piles of garbage and then we see the little girl visiting President Kirchner. Daljit Dhaliwal gives the title of the episode:
…Going straight to the top…
We then see the UNTV 21ST Century logo, and go straight to a scene from the third story to be covered – Palestinians demonstrating against Israeli troops somewhere on the West Bank.
Daljit Dhaliwal introduces this episode with this thumbnail description:
… Years of conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the struggle to feed the most
vulnerable… Women fight back – with inspiring results…
We see female Palestinian women feeding children. We then cut to the UNTV 21st Century logo, and the main musical theme. Then, at 1:37, we dissolve to Daljit Dhaliwal in the studio. She addresses the camera:
… Hello, and welcome to 21st Century. I am Daljit Dhaliwal… Children in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the DRC, have had their share of dangers. The country’s civil war
has killed millions of people, and left the nation traumatized, and families struggling in
poverty… But in recent years, DRC’s children are facing a new threat: children are being
cast out of their homes and forced to undergo dangerous rituals – all in the name of
superstition...
Behind her, we see a big screen with images of an exorcism in progress. We then cut straight into the scene, and see a Kimbanguist priest leading the exorcism of a small boy. The presenter sets the scene:
…This small boy needs help – or so he’s been told. The adults around him argue that they are
acting for his own protection – and for his family. They say he is a witch – possessed by evil
spirits…
We see a priestess sprinkling hot candle wax on the boy’s head and we hear the chanting from the congregation of the church in the background. The mood is reminiscent of a voodoo ceremony from a Hollywood film, only this is real. We see the priest leading the ceremony. He explains to us what he is doing in the Congolese language of Lingala, and we hear a translation in voice-over:
…This child was bewitched by evil spirits. Someone gave him biscuits which transformed
themselves into human flesh. We are going to take out this human flesh…
As we watch the terrified boy, Daljit Dhaliwal, in voice-over, sets the scene:
…This is an exorcism…Pastor Guy St. Pierre says that some mysterious stranger gave the boy the biscuits in the night, and now, candles, incantation and water are necessary to remove the evil spirits…
The priest shows a white substance he claims to have pulled from the boy’s stomach. He claims they are human bones. We see the priest relaxing outside the temple as he says:
…It’s a struggle between the evil spirits and the servants of God. Witchcraft is a disease we
can cure…
We cut to a long shot of a Kinshasa street, and then to a group of kids playing in the street.
Daljit Dhaliwal gives the big picture:
…Every week in Kinshasa, capital of the DRC, pastors like St. Pierre perform cruel and sometimes dangerous rituals like this, and they have many prey to pick from…In Kinshasa alone, there are now 20,000 children have been thrown onto the streets by their own families, who are convinced they are dangerous sorcerers…”
We see Judith Lavoie of MONUSCO Child Protection as she explains:
…Children can become the scapegoats for all the problems that a family faces…
We then meet Moisie, a former witch kid who has survived and now has created an NGO dedicated to helping witch kids on the street. He introduces us to the lives of different witch kids living on the harsh streets of Kinshasa, a big city with a population of 10 million, and what they must do to survive when their families refuse to take them back. Some become prostitutes, and some start sniffing glue. What is clear is that once these kids branded as witches by a priest, their lives are ruined. Meanwhile, the priests grow rich on the costly exorcisms.
Kinshasa’s Witch Children runs for about 10 minutes, as do each of the next two stories. All of the stories are told in the same fashion, with the presenter introducing the subject and the main characters, and interjecting factual information to provide context. Otherwise, the characters speak for themselves, and their words are translated with voice-overs. The program is an excellent example of the power of showing, rather than telling, engaging stories about real people. It allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions, without didactic guidelines.
Commentary: UNTV 21st Century was a highly polished and fast-moving digital video magazine style show with of high production quality from the opening graphics through to the closing credits. Daljit Dhaliwal gives the program immediate audience credibility, and the producers were thus able to tell lively, engaging stories from around the world about real people who tell their own stories in their own words.
Many of these stories, like Kinshasa’s Witch Children, were given to UNTV by the video units of UN Peacekeeping missions, so they did not require travel by UNTV staff. UNTV 21st Century was well received by broadcasters around the world, and was distributed in c. 80 countries by the time Chaim retired. Just as was the case with UN in Action, UN agencies would see the program and ask UNTV to cover their activities, and many were willing to cover whatever travel costs were needed.
In sum, UNTV 21St Century was a highly successful program for the United Nations which provides dramatic narrative content about UN -related activities in a dynamic contemporary digital magazine style form. From presenter Daljit Dhaliwal to the graphics and editing, the production value is first class; audiences around the world generally respond to well presented narrative content, and it is no surprise to learn the program was seen in 80 different countries.
IV.9.3. New Media
When asked about the attitude of his UN supervisors and managers towards New Media, and if they understood how it has been changing the global media landscape, Chaim felt that, with the notable exception of UNIFEED, a satellite based service which provides clips of UN activities from New York and UN Peacekeeping missions from around the world, UNTV has been slow to understand the possibilities and potential offered by New Media:
…First, I need to say that I myself was not prepared for the major changes ushered in by digital technology. But I soon realized that this was an irreversible move. We, at UNTV, kept in close touch with international broadcasters and were fairly-well informed about the digital revolution going on. For most established media companies, the transition analog - digital was very traumatic but it was here to stay. The UN typically chose to ignore this revolution…
Chaim placed the blame for this inability to adjust to New Media on the UN leadership. For example, the radical changes occurring in the broadcast industry took over one decade to be absorbed by the leadership of UNDPI. He commented:
It took literally years before I was able to convince my superiors of the crucially vital role played by UN Webcast as a direct, no filter/mediation communication tool directly addressing the general public, and thus, bypassing traditional (and non-traditional) media…The communication leadership at the UN took years to understand that the traditional media triumvirate (Radio/TV/Press) was in its way out.
In short, Chaim felt that the United Nations was unprepared for the urgent task of finding new ways to communicate utilizing new digital tools for the purpose of telling its own story to the world. And likewise, when the transition analog - digital finally did take place - as a direct consequence of the implementation of the Secretariat's Capital Master Plan, the $1.876 billion renovation of the UN complex –he felt many poor decisions were made.
For example, Chaim was critical of what became of the extraordinary UN Film Library, which was moved from the basement of the UN Secretariat to a remote location in New Jersey:
…A case in point are the technically low standards used for keeping digital audio-visual legacy archive. The quality of what is to be preserved for posterity is well below what is to be expected and it’s doubtful whether the historical material currently being recorded will last for long. During my tenure at the UN, I never perceived an institutional care for its extraordinary audio-visual archive – there were never enough resources (human/technical/financial) to manage such an important collection…
During his almost three decades with UNTV, he lamented that the archive was never seen as an asset, or something to be proud of. Rather, it was seen as a costly and unglamorous source for headaches of senior communication managers.
…We truly loved the UN film archives. But for years the UN leadership tried to rid itself of both, audio-visual and textual archives, thanks to the incredible short-sightedness of those responsible for these areas. I imagine that the situation remains the same today. This is heartbreaking as the UN possesses one of the most extraordinary and vital audio-visual archives worldwide. Its precious holdings – telling the world history from the end of the Second World War to our days – will probably rot away, just like the institution itself, in the coming years…
Speaking from personal experience as a producer who enjoyed using the UNTV Film Library in the UN Secretariat sub-basement during the 1970’s and 80’s hunting for historical material from around the world, I found the re-location of the UNTV to an inaccessible location in New Jersey to be a fundamental mistake. Part of the UNTV mandate has always been encouraging production of documentaries about the United Nations and United Nations-related activities around the world, and easy access to free historical material greatly facilitated such production. However, now one has to make a special request to the current librarian to order such material from New Jersey for viewing, and one has to pay for each request in advance. In the past, one of the capable UNTV Film librarians could make a recommendation, which could save both time and money. That service sadly no longer exists.
At present, Chaim also felt strongly that the United Nations is still uncertain as what it wants to be. He noted that while the United Nations remains a place where head of states like to meet, the lack of a defined role is unsustainable for the survival of the UN in the near future, and this identity crisis does not bode well for humankind’s future. Internally, Chaim believes this philosophical turmoil even affected senior managerial decisions made regarding the UN transition from analog to digital, noting that the UN took a long time to embrace these changes – and that, when it did, the organization chose the wrong technical parameters.
In 2016, this crisis became more acute with the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the UN’s largest donor nation and host country – the United States. Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was president from 2008-2016, President Trump made no secret of his disdain for the United Nations, and had promised major budget cuts from the US contribution to the United Nations.
After almost thirty years as both a UNTV producer and UNTV Chief, Chaim Litewski retired in late 2017 to work on his own projects, one of which will be described in Chapter VI. There has long been talk of major changes in UNDPI, but, according to Chaim, even though he was by the most experienced broadcast media professional in UNDPI, he was never consulted for his views or suggestions regarding any of these changes.
IV.10. Conclusions
On 9 August ,2017, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed Alison Smale of England to be the new UN Undersecretary General for Public Information. UNSG Smale had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and within a year, UNDPI was suddenly rebranded as the UN Global Communications Division, or UNGCD. In an organization already rife with acronyms, the result was organizational chaos both inside and outside the organization, since the strategy behind the change was never shared with the staff. There was no run-up to prepare potential clients or consumers for the change.
Likewise, around the same time, under new management, UNTV was suddenly rebranded as UN Web TV and UN Video, and the production of the highly UNTV 21st Century series was cut altogether. While the new UNTV management announced it would continue production of the UN in Action series, producers were advised they would be expected to find funding for travel and find distribution for what programs they were able to produce themselves. It seems the new UNTV management, which lacked UN and other broadcast experience, was unaware of the correlation between UNTV 21st Century coverage of UN Agency activities and UN Agency willingness to finance travel for production. As a result, what with the budget cuts encouraged by the Trump administration, suddenly UNTV had little money for travel budgets, and production was limited to coverage of activities at the UN Secretariat in New York for UN Web-TV.
While the post -2017 activities of UNTV lie outside the scope of this case study, the author has heard of reports of related problems and decisions from a number of UNTV producers, both past and present. For example, the new target audience is apparently now a youth audience, which apparently justifies the current focus on what is called social media; while this new development is curious, the accompanying elimination of product with narrative content is disturbing, since that means elimination of documentary in all of its many manifestations.
While apparently the alleged short attention span of the intended youth audience is being used as justification for the elimination of narrative content, the author believes that narrative content is essential to successfully communicate any message – regardless of the age of the intended audience. For the past 70 years, the primary challenge for UNTV has been to make UN activities both relevant and interesting to an international audience through the production of narrative content like The UN in Action and UNTV 21STCentury.
Thanks to the efforts of Senior Managers like Marcel Martin and Georges LeClere, and UNTV Chiefs like Steve Whitehouse and Chaim Litewski, UNTV and UNDPI became established and widely recognized brands in broadcast media around the world. In contrast, in 2019, the author knows no one outside the UN who has ever heard of The United Nations Global Communications Division, and the new acronym is already something of a joke within the UN. The rebranding of UNTV has been equally problematic. According to Chaim, the plans for the new UNTV were to cease production of narrative documentary content altogether when he left in 2018, and instead produce only raw, unedited coverage of UN meetings and events in the UN Secretariat to be distributed through UN Web TV.
This change in production philosophy collides directly with the current documentary boom among all audiences mentioned in the introduction. While the reason for this recent surge of audience interest in documentary remains to be scientifically determined, pundits and professionals seem to agree that there is an audience demand for the authenticity only documentary can provide.
Be that as it may, the future of documentary in any form at United Nations Television seems to be, at best, uncertain. UNSG Smale abruptly left her post in September, 2019, with an informal internal consensus that her brief tenure was somewhat less than successful. However, it remains to be seen whether her capable successor Melissa Fleming will be able to do with what is left of the old Department of Public Information, not to mention UNTV. In a recent interview with the author, Chaim expressed his concerns. For example, Chaim is not convinced by the official explanation that the previous UN Strategic Communications strategy of producing narrative content in partnership with commercial broadcast entities like CNN can somehow by replaced by global campaigns on what the new UNGCD calls social media. Chaim feels that the UNGCD brain trust does not seem to realize why it is so difficult for the UN to produce material that will attract attention on any social media platform; he thinks one solution might be just to make shorter versions of narrative content in lengths suitable for social media, but as noted, the current UNGCD brain trust has never asked him for his input.
As previously noted, as a fellow media professional and former UN Video Unit Chief, the author shares many of Chaim’s concerns. Among other things, the author strongly believes in the value of narrative content in the form of both short and long form documentary for framing any message and making it palatable to the intended audience, and the possibility that all UNTV resources will now be solely devoted to covering the many interminable meetings at the UN Secretariat is a depressing thought. While the author can certainly conceive of interest from broadcasters in a speech by a famous international statesman, or some important announcement by a head of state, such events are few and far between.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the growth of New Media continues at a rapid pace while the United Nations remains bogged down in an autocratic managerial structure which is antithetical to some of the structural changes being created by New Media according to media scholars like Professor Henry Jenkins, who believes we are now part of what he calls Convergence Culture. 20
In 2020, the United Nations is still internally operating like a World War II era organization or corporation. For example, in much of the corporate world today, there is a growing awareness that staff evaluation of supervisors in so-called 360 degree assessments can be a useful way to improve managerial performance through staff feedback.21 In the United Nations, however, performance assessments are still almost universally 180 degree assessments – meaning staff are only evaluated by their first supervisors, with additional comments possible from the first supervisor’s supervisor.22 While there are valid arguments for both approaches, the limitations in the 180-degree assessment should be evident – particularly if one is managing a creative team endeavor such as producing television documentaries in what is now recognized as The Age of New Media. 23
For the past 70 years, the challenge for UNTV has been to make UN activities both relevant and interesting to an international audience through the production of narrative content like The UN in Action and UNTV 21st Century. Thanks to the efforts of UNTV Chiefs like Steve Whitehouse and Chaim Litewski, UNTV and UNDPI have become established and widely recognized brands in broadcast media around the world.
In sad contrast, in 2020, the author knows of no one outside the UN who has ever heard of United Nations Communications Division, though he has noted that the new acronym is already something of a joke within the UN.
Appendix A: Notes
[1] Plesch, Dan (America, Hitler and the UN) IB Taurus& Co. Ltd. London, 2015 From Foreword by Sir Brian Urquhart
2 Elsaesser, Thomas, “Die Stadt von morgen: Filme zum Bauen und Wohnen”, in Klaus Kreimeir, Antje Ehmann and Jeanpaul Goergen (eds.), Gesichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland.Band 2: Weimarer Republik 1918-33, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2005, pp.381-409
3 Thompson, Kristin ( Storytelling in Film and Television) Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 2003.pp 9-34
4In 2019, the United Nations Department of Public Information was rebranded as the UN Global Communications Department. To avoid confusion, in this dissertation, I shall refer to the United Nations Department of Public Information by the old acronym of UNDPI.
5 Plesch, ibid, p. 168
6 Link to Housing Problems (1935), https://youtu.be/KqL2dtHp8Cc
7 Nelson, Joyce (The Colonized Eye- Rethinking the Grierson Legend) Between the Lines, Toronto,1988, p.71
8 Nelson, ibid. p.159
9 Druick, Zoe (Projecting Canada- Government Policy and Documentary Film at the National Film Board, Montreal, McGill University Press, 2007
10 Richards, Jeffrey, (Thorold Dickinson: The Man and His Films.) Croom Helm, London, 1986, pp 174-75
11For Nor Any Drop to Drink, please click on this link: https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2413/2413854
Also, please click on this link for a portrait of producer Joe O’Brien:
12 Please click on this link for To Be Thirty:
13 One night when Steve and I were working on one of the countless rewrites of the script for To Be Thirty, he had this creative epiphany: “When I started working with United Nations Television, I was thrilled by the challenge of trying to show the people of the world what the United Nations was doing in their name. I soon realized that it was going to be even more difficult than I had imagined, and eventually I secretly began to suspect our bosses wanted us to make the worst films in the world, because then nobody would watch them, and there wouldn’t be any problems…
14 Please click on this link for Footnotes to a War:
15 Please click on this link for Shelter for The Homeless:
16 National Film Board Annual Report, 1979-80, From Druick, ibid, p. 163
Please click here for UN IN ACTION (UNMAS, 2011)
18 Please click here for My Road to Rwanda (2018)
19Please click here for link to UNTV 21st Century (2012)
20Jenkins, Henry ( Convergence Culture – Where Old and New Media Collide) New York University Press, New York and London, 2006. P.
21 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/360-degree-feedback-information-1917537
22https://www.traininghand.com/methods-performance-appraisal/
23 My own production philosophy was developed as a directing student at Sweden’s Dramatiska Institutet, where, in keeping with the Social Democratic concept of medbestämmande rätt, we directors had to get input from all members of our team before making any major decisions. This approach requires time to build a consensus, but, once a consensus has been reached, the entire team is ready for action. The UN approach is the American corporate management style – the manager makes a quick decision, but then has to figure out how to do it.
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Appendix B: Articles
         In Projecting the UN Through New Media, Is Quality at Stake? September 9, 2019 by Ted Folke In the Congo, celebrating the International Day of Women’s Rights, 2019. The author of this essay, who led the video unit for the UN mission in the country for nearly five years, warns against the UN forgoing original media programming for social media content. MICHAEL ALI/MONUSCO. In 2012, after almost five years as chief of the video unit in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I reached the compulsory UN retirement age of 62 and had to leave. I loved my work, but after four decades working in film and television production on five continents for the organization, I finally had time to contemplate the extraordinary evolution of media technology in my lifetime — the digital revolution — and to explore how these changes were affecting UN strategic communications at UNTV, the video portal, in New York. What I found was disturbing. Thanks to digital technology, both consumers and producers now have many options to produce and disseminate news and other information around the world. For example, when I started working for Monusco (as the UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo is called), my first task was to create a video magazine to win over Congolese hearts and minds and explain why thousands of UN peacekeepers were installed in their country. The result, “MONUSCO Realities,” was viewed weekly by approximately 30 million Congolese on the country’s major TV networks and ran without problem for four years. Our secret? With the support of an enlightened director in the Monusco Department of Public Information, Kevin S. Kennedy, we abandoned the patronizing traditional UN voice-of-God format for a lively mix of peacekeeping mission news and features about real people, shot around the country and told on-camera by our exclusively Congolese presenters and reporters from the popular UN-run Radio Okapi in the Congo. After I left the UN, I decided to make some sense of the wide-ranging developments in my field by writing a dissertation for the Center for Languages and Literature at the University of Lund in Sweden, including case studies of UNTV and the Monusco video unit. In the process, I learned that both UNTV and the former UN Department of Public Information — renamed the Department of Global Communications — have been undergoing major transformations in recent years. As a concerned former UN staff member, I would like to share some of my findings to the continuing discussion of UN strategic communications. First, I was surprised to learn from former UNTV staff members that UNTV had ceased production of its flagship program, “21st Century.” A spinoff from BBC’s “21st Century,” the UNTV version featured a world-class presenter, Daljit Dhaliwal, who won many awards and enjoyed global distribution for a decade. I also learned that UNTV has stopped production of the popular “UN Year in Review,” a highlight reel of international events significant in the work of the UN. All that is left of UNTV’s original programming is its most successful broadcast program in UN history — the “UN in Action” series — which presents vignettes of UN work around the world and has been the face of the organization globally for almost two decades. The production arm of UNTV tasked with creating new episodes of “UN in Action” and material for new UN social media platforms is called UN Video. However, since UN Video reportedly has a limited budget for travel, program producers must often secure funding for travel and arrange distribution for individual programs as well as produce quality narrative content acceptable to the UN. |
| Speaking from personal experience, I believe this is a lot to ask of any producer; one can only hope that senior managers at the UN can find viable partnerships for funding just as their predecessors managed to do in the past. If they cannot, UN Video will have difficulty producing original quality programming. By default, unfortunately, UNTV’s primary role now seems to be offering raw coverage of UN meetings distributed on UN Web TV. While live coverage of UN activities in the UN Secretariat, Security Council and many other UN forums certainly has historical and archival value, such coverage alone has a limited promotional impact. In simple communications terms, UN meetings are not interesting to the average viewer unless they are part of a story. An example is the film on the UN’s 30th anniversary, which I made with a former UNTV chief, Steve Whitehouse. His job was to provide the UN content, while my job was to provide a narrative to make that content intriguing and emotionally engaging. The result, “To Be 30,” has been translated into more than 15 languages and won many prizes and is one of the most popular films in UN history. Alison Smale, the head of the UN Department of Global Communications until her recent retirement, confirmed in an email interview that UN Video had ceased production of “21st Century” but would continue production for the popular “UN in Action” series in the UN’s six official languages. Smale did not answer questions, however, about the number of programs produced, plans for distribution or effects of budgetary constraints on the series other than to say, “Like many organizations today, we face challenges in obtaining resources to carry out our mandates and we seek dynamic partnerships both within the UN family and externally to create opportunities to produce and share our content.” As a result, key questions remain unanswered about the future of original programming by the UN, which has successfully promoted the organization’s brand since the UN was founded in 1945. “UN in Action” is but one example of what is possible; as the creator of “UN in Action,” Georges Leclere, director of UN Radio and Visual Services from 1986 to 1993, told me that in a recent interview, thanks to a partnership with “CNN World Report,” the “UN in Action” series was shown regularly in as many as 135 countries. This global distribution facilitated procurement of funding for travel from UN agencies for subsequent UNTV chiefs like Steve Whitehouse and Chaim Litewski, who shot stories on locations around the world for “21st Century,” “UN in Action” and other original productions. In response to other questions about the changes in programming, Smale said, “The role of the Department of Global Communications (DGC) is to share the United Nations story with the world, in multiple languages and formats so that people everywhere have a better understanding of the UN’s work and values.” As technologies evolve, Smale added, “DGC is adapting too, updating our formats, platforms and distribution channels and partners so we can reach larger audiences and make a greater impact. Increasingly we are making virtual reality films, for example, and more mobile- friendly content.” One can only hope that the Department of Global Communications can continue to carry on the distinguished tradition started by the UN Department of Public Information after the end of World War II. At that time, the founding nations believed that the UN was obligated to show the citizens of the world what the UN was doing in their name, and that task was given to the Department of Public Information. It responded with the production of quality content in different media in the official UN languages. Today, seven decades later, the basic task remains fundamentally the same, but the digital revolution has made it possible to cheaply produce and distribute high-quality programming telling the UN story and promoting the UN message. It would be a shame if the UN were to miss this historic opportunity to connect and engage with the populations it serves. |
From the Congo to the UN: ‘Hear the Cries of Women and Girls’ by Julienne Lusenge December 31, 2015
Unprepared and Unprotected: UN Peacekeepers’ Lives Must Be Saved by James Cunliffe January 9, 2018
Violence Against Women Worsens by the Day in the Congo by Justine Masika Bihamba July 26, 2018
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When Is an Attack on UN Peacekeepers a War Crime and When Is It Not? by Mona Ali Khalil November 30, 2018
WORLDVIEWS AlisonSmale,Monusco,UNDepartmentofGlobalCommunications,UNsocialmedia,UNVideo,UNWebTV,UNTV
· Russia Is Busy as Security Council President, but Putin Is Staying Home
· My Year in Africa: Why This Brazilian Woman Peacekeeper Wants to Return
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Appendix C: Interviews and Correspondence with Principals
1.Georges Leclere:
Dear Ted,
Thank you for your questions! A very enjoyable trip to Memory Lane!
Some questions can be answered simply with few words. You will find my answer in blue within your text.
Other questions have to be nuanced and need additional research. I will guide you during our next phone call.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Folke <tedfolke@gmail.com>
To: Georges Leclere <georges@lgma.tv>; Georges Leclere <Leclere44@aol.com>
Cc: Lars Gustaf Andersson <lars_gustaf.andersson@litt.lu.se>
Sent: Tue, Mar 17, 2020 6:15 pm
Subject: Questions for Ted's Dissertation Interview
From: Ted Folke <tedfolke@gmail.com>
To: Georges Leclere <georges@lgma.tv>; Georges Leclere <Leclere44@aol.com>
Cc: Lars Gustaf Andersson <lars_gustaf.andersson@litt.lu.se>
Sent: Tue, Mar 17, 2020 6:15 pm
Subject: Questions for Ted's Dissertation Interview
Dear George,
I very much appreciate your taking the time to do this interview. Your input is invaluable!
Here are my questions:
1) What was your professional background before you started to work for UNTV?
About 13 years of French News TV reporter, then producer. Extensive international coverage. One point was very important, I interviewed Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brejnev while they were heads of State. That added points to my resume.
2) Did you replace Marcel Martin as Director of RVS? If so, what was your exact title,
and which year did you start?
Correct. I had the very same title as Marcel who was instrumental in introducing me to the Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Under secretary General Yasushi Akachi, head of DPI. I met them both before applying to the position.
I was the Director of the Radio & Visual Services Division, a D2 function.
3) When you arrived, how many producers did RVS have working in-house, and what were they doing? Were they still doing the " Man Builds, Man Destroys' series?
You have to distinguish the News Producers under Martin Bunnel, the Documentary Producers under Peter Hollender then Elspeth McDougall and the Radio Producers under Erik Walters. For your purpose, I would say a dozen producers were permanents. This number should be verified, probably with OHRM.
I never heard of the show you mentioned. It was probably produced way before my arrival or produced by a UN Agency like UNDP. Just a guess.
4) If so, how many 30 minute programs were they producing each year, and what kind of distribution did they have? If I remember correctly, they were a co-production with the New York State Department of Education, Where were they shown, and who saw them? Did they have any international distribution? If so, what?
When I arrived at the UNDPI - RVSD, Marcel Martin told me that I was needed for my TV background because most of the video productions non-news, (Like SC and GA coverage), were destined to the UNICs, (UN Information Centers) around the world. And the head of each UNIC was placing all RVSD production to local Broadcasters. Many of the videos were produced as an "illustration" of UN major observations, like the year of Refugees, the year of Water, etc... and as such, mandated by the General Assembly guided by the Committee on Information.
Again, I never heard of the coproduction with the NYS DOE.
Please note that about 3 years after I started, DPI separated the production division and the distribution division. I was not anymore in charge of Distribution. But ... the Head of the distribution usually had a limited direct knowledge of the television and radio world and he was intensely relying on the UNICs. My personal excellent relations with the Director in charge of Distribution were instrumental in the success of some programs.
5) What were the origins of the UN In Action series? How did you decide to go in that direction?
UN in Action was my invention. It was mandated by NOBODY. No boss, no committee no General Assembly. I by-passed everybody, just using 2 elements: I had some producers not fully occupied and frustrated because they wanted to do more and I had a deep knowledge of the way News Editions of major TV Networks around the world were functioning.
Also, after one year, I knew exactly what RVSD was capable of with its limited resources. And ... I had many personal relations with many heads of information of UN Agencies, a considerable source of hard news videos.
So I imagined a program, short enough to be absorbed by any News Bulletin in the world, close enough to hard news and WITH NO INTERVIEWS, just few seconds sound bytes that did NOT need a translation and a voice over to be broadcast. That was my rule: 3 minutes max, no talking head of more than 10 seconds, hard news story of the work of the UN SYSTEM.
Remember that at that time, most of the DPI news productions were talking heads. meaning a very short life span.
Under the supervision of Elspeth McDougall, the video producer Claire Taplin edited the very first UN in Action around mid-september 1987. And sent to the UNICs as a test. Some UNICs loved it already as easy to place. But the chance of my life was that a guy named Stuart Loory, from CNN created the International News Hour where the stories were produced by local journalists signing the show themselves.
Well, we got together with Stu and we proposed UN in Action. He loved it and ran it, if I remember well, the first week of October 1987.
And since that day, UN in Action was in every single CNN International Hour, at least when I was in charge.
Of course, nobody criticized me for not following the slow UN procedures as the visibility the UN gained by being weekly on CNN with major actions in the field was single to none! Very rapidly UN in Action was produced in all 6 UN official languages and soon, we were broadcast in 135 countries.
6) When did you start producing UN In Action, and how did you distribute the programs?
See above. CNN, UNICs and direct relations of our distribution division did all the work.
7) What role did Steve Whitehouse play in their production?
When Steve joined UN in Action, his journalistic sense allowed UN in Action to be ready on time to be hard news. From Elections in Nicaragua to drought in Ethiopia or Earthquakes, wars, famines, etc... all stories were either edited with unique footage provided by FAO, UNICEF, WB, UNESCO, etc... before anyone saw it or in places where only the UN could access, or shot on location by Steve and his team, very often guided by Elspeth from HQ. UN in Action was definitely a news item for broadcasters most of the time.
8) How did the end of the Cold War affect UNTV?
Long story. Let's talk on the phone
9).When did RVS become UNTV?
RVSD was a division. UNTV was part of it.
Then Information Products Division was also a Division with UNTV part of it. When François Guiliani replaced me and called the Division Media Division, UNTV was also part of it.
10) When did you leave the UN, and who succeeded you?
I left DPI end of January 1993. But I had some independent missions with Kofi Annan, then USG of DPKO, like Somalia, covering UN activities like a trip of the then SG Boutros Boutros Galli in Baidoa and Mogadishiu that I took with Steve Whitehouse and Jimmy Bu.
My successor was François Giuliani, former spokesperson of Perez De Cuellar and Kurt Waldeim. François left for the Metropolitan Opera and I became Executive Director of the International Emmy Awards in New York.
11) UN In Action is perhaps the most successful series ever produced by the UN. Do you have any opinions as to why it was so successful?
Yes!!!!! See above!
12) Do you any any thoughts you would like to add?
Yes, one major point.
The UN is NOT a broadcaster. NOT a TV station.
The UN is an international organization that generate news, lots of news!
The UN is not very different than Microsoft, Apple, IBM or the Bank of America.
The UN needs 2 major attitudes:
1) Fully understand how News operations work
2) Learn how to find the most suitable actions or "products" it generate and make them accessible to the News Organizations
With the rapidly changing nature of these News Operation, the UN needs to be constantly studying how to best access them.
I guess that because I was using this mentality in my work, DPI added Press, then Publications and even email, in 1988! to my duties.
But I was and still is, a TV guy. It's time for me to pass the baton to runners faster than me!
Tell them!!
Many thanks!
Best,
2. Steve Whitehouse #1
In some ways this is better
But it seems you have not actually read what I wrote because you have retained a number of factual errors in your text. Such as the history of UN in Action.
You seem to be determined to start with the assumption that UNTV is a failure, crippled by political interference.
Given that the production side of UNTV had (and has) an annual budget less than the New Jersey Nightly news on PBS, another view might be that to have produced so much and reached such a large audience in a constrained political and budgetary environment is a considerable achievement.
This whole political control thing is a red herring. UNTV is not trying to be a mini NBC or BBC. And to say that live or edited syndication of important Security Council meetings or press conferences is not news is ridiculous.
Of course it requires considerable ingenuity to navigate in an environment like the UN. But it is done.
This whole political thing can be wildly exaggerated. Take the example of World Chronicle, nearly 1,000 Meet the Press type format shows over nearly 30 years.
The reporters (most from major news organisations) were entirely free to ask UN officials and other international guests whatever they wanted to.
No hint of political control. An ingenious solution to making TV in the DPI context.
S
But it seems you have not actually read what I wrote because you have retained a number of factual errors in your text. Such as the history of UN in Action.
You seem to be determined to start with the assumption that UNTV is a failure, crippled by political interference.
Given that the production side of UNTV had (and has) an annual budget less than the New Jersey Nightly news on PBS, another view might be that to have produced so much and reached such a large audience in a constrained political and budgetary environment is a considerable achievement.
This whole political control thing is a red herring. UNTV is not trying to be a mini NBC or BBC. And to say that live or edited syndication of important Security Council meetings or press conferences is not news is ridiculous.
Of course it requires considerable ingenuity to navigate in an environment like the UN. But it is done.
This whole political thing can be wildly exaggerated. Take the example of World Chronicle, nearly 1,000 Meet the Press type format shows over nearly 30 years.
The reporters (most from major news organisations) were entirely free to ask UN officials and other international guests whatever they wanted to.
No hint of political control. An ingenious solution to making TV in the DPI context.
S
Steve Whitehouse #2:
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Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:40 AM
|  | ||
| ||||
Ted,
It is factually incorrect, as I pointed out, to say UN in Action was created for CNN World Report. UN in Action predated CNN World Report. And, as I wrote in the reply you do not seem to have properly read or incorporated into your text below, the CNN WR contributions were a slightly cut down version of UN in Action items which were not 10 minutes in length but 3 to 4 minutes. The length was chosen to the items would fit comfortably inside local and national news programmes.
Kevin Kennedy is a good guy but is not an authority on "corporate videos" or much else in the TV area. I get the impression you have the wrong idea about the items and you should really go and look at samples of UN in Actions over the years.
Rather than writing off all relatively recent documentaries as failures, you should cite the obvious big successes such as the the two documentaries about the work of the UN Special inspectors in Iraq after the first Gulf War. The more recent UN TV magazine series 21st Century, made up of longer cuts of UN in Actions, was/is regularly broadcast on the BBC World Service Television.
It is perfectly clear that UNTV's output often fitted the definition of "news" whether defined by Swedish Professors or not. Get another Swedish Professor who knows what he/she is talking about is my advice.
Many reputable broadcasters are financed by Governments so the often advanced argument that the UN pays for UNTV which is therefore less legitimate in some way or is not news or is uniquely inhibited by political considerations does not stand up. Until recently, for example, the much lauded BBC World Service Radio was directly funded by the British Foreign Office.
I think you are making things difficult for yourself by barking up the wrong tree.
S
It is factually incorrect, as I pointed out, to say UN in Action was created for CNN World Report. UN in Action predated CNN World Report. And, as I wrote in the reply you do not seem to have properly read or incorporated into your text below, the CNN WR contributions were a slightly cut down version of UN in Action items which were not 10 minutes in length but 3 to 4 minutes. The length was chosen to the items would fit comfortably inside local and national news programmes.
Kevin Kennedy is a good guy but is not an authority on "corporate videos" or much else in the TV area. I get the impression you have the wrong idea about the items and you should really go and look at samples of UN in Actions over the years.
Rather than writing off all relatively recent documentaries as failures, you should cite the obvious big successes such as the the two documentaries about the work of the UN Special inspectors in Iraq after the first Gulf War. The more recent UN TV magazine series 21st Century, made up of longer cuts of UN in Actions, was/is regularly broadcast on the BBC World Service Television.
It is perfectly clear that UNTV's output often fitted the definition of "news" whether defined by Swedish Professors or not. Get another Swedish Professor who knows what he/she is talking about is my advice.
Many reputable broadcasters are financed by Governments so the often advanced argument that the UN pays for UNTV which is therefore less legitimate in some way or is not news or is uniquely inhibited by political considerations does not stand up. Until recently, for example, the much lauded BBC World Service Radio was directly funded by the British Foreign Office.
I think you are making things difficult for yourself by barking up the wrong tree.
S
Steve Whitehouse #3:
|
Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 12:31 PM
|  | ||
| ||||
Ted,
Well, I don't know much about Grierson's role with DPI, if indeed he had one.
His Wikipedia entry doesn't mention DPI as such but although it touches on his reputation as a lefty.
"During WW II, Grierson was a consultant to prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a minister of the Wartime Information Board. He concentrated on documentary film production in New York after resigning this post following the war. In 1945 Grierson was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of the NFB after allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war. Following his dismissal, and that of three of his coworkers, Grierson returned to Scotland.
From 1946 to 1948 he was the director of mass communications at UNESCO, and from 1948 to 1950 he was controller of films at Britain's Central Office of Information. During the 1950s he worked at Southall Studios in West London."
 |
John Grierson CBE (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film.
|
Here's a bit more from another biography:
"In June 1937 Grierson resigned from the GPO and formed Film Centre, an advisory and co-ordinating body for the documentary film movement. It was this kind of supervisory capacity that characterised Grierson's role and influence on factual film, with him also acting as production advisor to Films of Scotland, and, throughout the war, serving as Film Commissioner at the National Film Board of Canada.
After a brief and fairly fruitless period in New York, Grierson returned to the UK in 1946. In February 1948 he was appointed to the Films Division of the Central Office of Information. Over the next two years he attempted to re-establish a major programme of government documentary production, but was repeatedly frustrated by political opposition and public sector spending cuts provoked by the post-war economic crisis. In the 1950s, Grierson acted as joint head of Group 3, the production arm of the National Film Finance Corporation, spent several years in independent television, before finishing his career teaching at a Canadian university."
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Producer, Director, Executive. John Grierson was born on 26 April 1898 at Deanston, Perthshire, Scotland. After serving on minesweepers during World War 1, he ...
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There is a Grierson Trust which might be helpful. Here's their website:
Here's a reference to a book (on sale at Amazon) that might help too.
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Buy John Grierson: A Documentary Biography First Edition by Forsyth Hardy (ISBN: 9780571103317) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
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The creation of the NZ National Film Unit and the setting up of a Government film organisation in Australia were influenced by Grierson's example, I think.
Maybe Elspeth knows something more. Who knows.
Good luck!
A piece of land a house to come -- Swedish log cabin for Bua? Sauna and a dash into the Hudson, perhaps?
Atmosphere in UK very bad, what with Brexit and everything.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve Whitehouse #4:
Ted,
Basically I don't think you can't conflate DPKO Peacekeeping television initiatives with UNTV. They are really very different -- it is a case of apples and oranges.
I am not sure you can call your thesis United Nations Cinema when your one big success story is a radio programme.
Even within the different peacekeeping operation there has been a wide variety of approaches, legal relationships with the host governments (very important if you want access to transmission), resources etc. Some UN PKOs had (and have) more staff and resources for (often very inadequate) visual outputs, often seen by very few people, than UNTV had resources in New York.
I am not sure what Ingrid Lehmann had to say about all of this. She had a rather chequered career with the UN actually.
On careers, yes, Dave Smith did have conflicts with the UN Congo information people. But the fact remains he was the prime mover in creating Okapi and initiating and sustaining the relationship with Hirondelle. I don't think you can avoid talking to him. He also knows a lot about UN Radio in New York.
On UNTV in New York (and Geneva for that matter), the prime purpose is, and remains, to cover activities at Headquarters and maintain a high technical and editorial standard to meet the requirements of national and international broadcasters. In this task it is very well respected by its clients. It also maintains an important video library. Since I left a lot of the output has gone digital as one can see from the UN.ORG website which is a success story in its own right.
Finished productions and news items are essentially an adjunct to the coverage responsibility and historically has usefully employed any spare technical capacity because the demand for raw coverage varies considerably and seasonally.
Yes, earlier UN film and television output was modeled on National Film Boards such as the Canadian Film Board. In those days documentaries on international subjects were far and few between so there was a bit of market for UN output. How many stand the test of time is another matter. I was told Thorold Dickinson basically blew the whole unit's budget with over ambitious productions. Someone who knows a bit about the earlier output is Richard Sydenham, currently living in the UK retired at richard.sydenham@gmail.com.
You are right to say that things had to change as television equipment became portable and film faded from the scene. The key piece of technology was the Sony Betacams, initially in analogue and then in digital forms. Of course now you can get video off your smart phone!
Even so, there were documentary successes in the new era especially when UNTV had privileged access to a story. "Hide and Seek in Iraq", for example, about the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was probably the most successful internationally distributed current affairs television documentary of its year. It was broadcast in one form or another by scores of developed country TV networks from US PBS to the BBC, Swedish TV etc. etc. Well worth a look.
As far as regular output was concerned, a new philosophy was adopted. Rather than trying to find a market/slots for 30-minute and 60-minute documentaries (especially when many broadcasters now wanted a series of 13 or 26 shows to fill out their schedules), we figured it was better to create a product which broadcasters would use within their own national news programmes, which are always among the highest rating programmes in all countries. That was the origin of UN in Action. Drawing on my own experience working in international news syndication, they were consciously modeled on the style of mainstream international news organisations such as Visnews (later Reuters TV) etc. Shooting in the field was made much speedier and efficient drawing on news approaches rather than the leisurely Film Board type schedules. The items were not 10 minutes in length, they were 3 to 4 minutes long to conform to the needs of news programmes and were all shot in the field. They were produced in all the UN official languages and their combined audiences were hundreds of millions of actual viewers in scores of countries. Hardly a failure. Dig some out, well worth a look.
As far as I was concerned, the editorial philosophy was clear and elemental: we had an absolute responsibility to the public to show what the UN and its agencies were doing with the tax payers money; and we had stories to tell stories the audiences could not get from any other source.
More recently, UNTV has re-edited the UN in Actions to make a half hour magazine programme, generally made up of three items, which is distributed separately.
I would not call UN in Action corporate videos. They essentially dealt with emerging topics such as population issues, peacekeeping, environmental stories, humanitarian relief etc. Mainstream news organisations were just not dealing with these subjects and so we had a ready market. We were something of a pioneer in this respect. Now environmental subjects etc. are routinely covered by national news organisations: that was not the case when UN in Action started.
In my time we experienced virtually no editorial interference from the UN hierarchy. They just let us get on with it. We were not trying to compete editorially with independent news organisation; we specialized in stories they were not covering. Over a span of more than 1,000 items over the years, I can count the times we had any editorial problems on the fingers of one hand.
So UN in Action was well underway by the time CNN World Report started. We were one of the three organisations that contributed to the very first show. We made it a point of honour to contribute to every single show from that time onwards. Eventually there were, I think, up to 80 countries participating in CNN World Report. Its audience, although significant and prestigious, was smaller than the audience for the actual UN in Actions. Our excellent relationship with CNN kept us up the mark production-wise and we won a number of awards at their annual conferences.
UN Radio is an entirely different story!
Anyway, the above are some thoughts. I think you are far too negative about what UNTV has done over the years so I hope this will help you put things in perspective.
As I say, to try and cover the history and experience of television and film across all the UN family and PK operations is probably too ambitious! Maybe you should stick to the PK operations you know about. There is plenty to discuss about how UN DPKO should carry out its public affairs responsibilities.
Happy to talk about all of this.
Cheers,
Basically I don't think you can't conflate DPKO Peacekeeping television initiatives with UNTV. They are really very different -- it is a case of apples and oranges.
I am not sure you can call your thesis United Nations Cinema when your one big success story is a radio programme.
Even within the different peacekeeping operation there has been a wide variety of approaches, legal relationships with the host governments (very important if you want access to transmission), resources etc. Some UN PKOs had (and have) more staff and resources for (often very inadequate) visual outputs, often seen by very few people, than UNTV had resources in New York.
I am not sure what Ingrid Lehmann had to say about all of this. She had a rather chequered career with the UN actually.
On careers, yes, Dave Smith did have conflicts with the UN Congo information people. But the fact remains he was the prime mover in creating Okapi and initiating and sustaining the relationship with Hirondelle. I don't think you can avoid talking to him. He also knows a lot about UN Radio in New York.
On UNTV in New York (and Geneva for that matter), the prime purpose is, and remains, to cover activities at Headquarters and maintain a high technical and editorial standard to meet the requirements of national and international broadcasters. In this task it is very well respected by its clients. It also maintains an important video library. Since I left a lot of the output has gone digital as one can see from the UN.ORG website which is a success story in its own right.
Finished productions and news items are essentially an adjunct to the coverage responsibility and historically has usefully employed any spare technical capacity because the demand for raw coverage varies considerably and seasonally.
Yes, earlier UN film and television output was modeled on National Film Boards such as the Canadian Film Board. In those days documentaries on international subjects were far and few between so there was a bit of market for UN output. How many stand the test of time is another matter. I was told Thorold Dickinson basically blew the whole unit's budget with over ambitious productions. Someone who knows a bit about the earlier output is Richard Sydenham, currently living in the UK retired at richard.sydenham@gmail.com.
You are right to say that things had to change as television equipment became portable and film faded from the scene. The key piece of technology was the Sony Betacams, initially in analogue and then in digital forms. Of course now you can get video off your smart phone!
Even so, there were documentary successes in the new era especially when UNTV had privileged access to a story. "Hide and Seek in Iraq", for example, about the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was probably the most successful internationally distributed current affairs television documentary of its year. It was broadcast in one form or another by scores of developed country TV networks from US PBS to the BBC, Swedish TV etc. etc. Well worth a look.
As far as regular output was concerned, a new philosophy was adopted. Rather than trying to find a market/slots for 30-minute and 60-minute documentaries (especially when many broadcasters now wanted a series of 13 or 26 shows to fill out their schedules), we figured it was better to create a product which broadcasters would use within their own national news programmes, which are always among the highest rating programmes in all countries. That was the origin of UN in Action. Drawing on my own experience working in international news syndication, they were consciously modeled on the style of mainstream international news organisations such as Visnews (later Reuters TV) etc. Shooting in the field was made much speedier and efficient drawing on news approaches rather than the leisurely Film Board type schedules. The items were not 10 minutes in length, they were 3 to 4 minutes long to conform to the needs of news programmes and were all shot in the field. They were produced in all the UN official languages and their combined audiences were hundreds of millions of actual viewers in scores of countries. Hardly a failure. Dig some out, well worth a look.
As far as I was concerned, the editorial philosophy was clear and elemental: we had an absolute responsibility to the public to show what the UN and its agencies were doing with the tax payers money; and we had stories to tell stories the audiences could not get from any other source.
More recently, UNTV has re-edited the UN in Actions to make a half hour magazine programme, generally made up of three items, which is distributed separately.
I would not call UN in Action corporate videos. They essentially dealt with emerging topics such as population issues, peacekeeping, environmental stories, humanitarian relief etc. Mainstream news organisations were just not dealing with these subjects and so we had a ready market. We were something of a pioneer in this respect. Now environmental subjects etc. are routinely covered by national news organisations: that was not the case when UN in Action started.
In my time we experienced virtually no editorial interference from the UN hierarchy. They just let us get on with it. We were not trying to compete editorially with independent news organisation; we specialized in stories they were not covering. Over a span of more than 1,000 items over the years, I can count the times we had any editorial problems on the fingers of one hand.
So UN in Action was well underway by the time CNN World Report started. We were one of the three organisations that contributed to the very first show. We made it a point of honour to contribute to every single show from that time onwards. Eventually there were, I think, up to 80 countries participating in CNN World Report. Its audience, although significant and prestigious, was smaller than the audience for the actual UN in Actions. Our excellent relationship with CNN kept us up the mark production-wise and we won a number of awards at their annual conferences.
UN Radio is an entirely different story!
Anyway, the above are some thoughts. I think you are far too negative about what UNTV has done over the years so I hope this will help you put things in perspective.
As I say, to try and cover the history and experience of television and film across all the UN family and PK operations is probably too ambitious! Maybe you should stick to the PK operations you know about. There is plenty to discuss about how UN DPKO should carry out its public affairs responsibilities.
Happy to talk about all of this.
Cheers,
3. Chaim Litewski:
DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW FOR TED FOLKE’S THESIS
Note: The following questions are intended to create a profile of digital technology used by video professionals. The answers will be strictly
confidential, and will only be used for the writing of this thesis. Please contact me directly at tedfolke@gmail.com should you have any questions, Thank you!
1) Please describe your production background and experience.
Since my early teens, I had been making short films using a Super-8 camera. I enjoyed experimenting with different sounds to illustrate/comment parades (religious, military, political protests), thus changing their perception/meaning. I became familiar early on with Soviet cinema of the 1920’s, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Vertov, in particular. Once I watched Bunuel’s “Exterminating Angel” in 1962, I decided that making films was really what I wanted to do professionally. I was tremendously impacted by Bunuel’s film and still today it remains my very favorite film of all times. From early age to my late teens, I watched films. Sometimes 12 to 15 features a week. There were 3 cinemas in the Rio suburb where I grew up (Nilopolis), each showing two feature films from Monday to Wednesday and another two, from Thursday to Sunday. I watched them all. There were a huge variety of Brazilian, US, Japanese, Eastern and Western European films shown in the Nilopolis’ cinemas. This, not including the films I watched on television. From 13 onwards I started attending screenings at Rio’s art cinemas and museums (which had excellent film programs, festivals, seasons, as well as lectures and film discussions). I helped creating various “film-clubs”, showing copies of films in 16mm at community centers and other places where young people gathered.
After returning from a long trip to Europe, the Middle East, North, Central and South America which lasted from 1974 to 1976, I started working as a camera assistant and junior producer at Rio de Janeiro's Public Television Channel (TV Educativa). The ongoing military dictatorship, the major economic (oil) crisis affecting the country and my own desire to experience academic life in Europe made me decide moving to London, England in mid-1976. I started a BA (Film) course at the Polytechnic of Central London (Westminster University) focusing my academic work on conflict and propaganda films (probably because what had been going on in Brazil as well as the influence of my parents’ personal experiences during the Second World War). For my graduation thesis, I wrote about a widespread propaganda campaign organized by the British Ministry of Information during the war years, named "Arm in Arm Together", which was about managing publicity regarding the Soviet Union to the British Public during the British/Soviet war alliance (1941 – 1945). This academic work would eventually become a film I wrote for Channel Four television (“Arm in Arm Together”). My MA thesis dealt also with Propaganda and Film, this time about the Ministry of Information's war propaganda for East Africa. I focused on a film, "Men of Two Worlds", about an African (Tanganyika) student living In London and having to return to his native African village in order to fight a witch doctor. This film was directed by Thorold Dickinson and as a result of interviewing him, I became familiar with the work he did at the United Nations' Film Unit during the late 50’s and early 60’s.
In parallel to my academic work at the Polytechnic, I attended a 3-year British University Film Studies course and obtained a diploma. Because of attending various film courses, screenings and other film-related events, I became familiar with people working at the British Film Institute, where I myself worked on a free-lance basis. Throughout my years of living in the UK, I was involved in the production of various independent films, included "Humboldt’s Travels" (for the British Film Institute's Production Board); "Commodities" (a six-part series for Channel Four) and many others. I published articles on various UK film magazines, including Sight and Sound, Screen, Film and TV World, among others. I also co-organized events at the British Film Institute's National Film Theater and the Edinburgh Film Festival. I helped distributing political films from Brazil (the output of film cooperative “Corcina”) throughout Europe, was involved with the IFA (Independent Film Makers Association), and the London-based Film and History Group. I also joined ACTT (the British Film and TV union) as a producer/director.
I had been free-lancing for Brazil's TV Globo London Bureau as an editor/producer since the late 70's, and in early 1983 began working full time for them as a news producer, covering international news and current affairs. In late 1985 I returned to Brazil through TV Globo. I worked for its operational division, based in Rio de Janeiro, helping to organize large news coverage operations domestically and internationally. I also opened a small production company with recording equipment (3/4 inch) I had brought with me from the UK. We produced pop-promos, political campaigns (the military had just left power after governing the country for 21 years), agit-prop video pieces, and covered Brazil for various foreign TV Channels.
In April 1987, I left Globo, closed the doors of my production company and moved to Brazil’s northeast state of Piaui. I had been invited to help setting up a Public TV and Radio Channel from scratch. We produced a lot with few resources. I was very much influenced by the debate around notions of “democratizing the air-waves” and this was an opportunity to put in practice what I had been thinking regarding media access by organized community groups. The period in Piaui was a high point in my professional career. The content produced by both radio and television was extensive and disseminated it locally and further afield, through exchange mechanisms we helped creating with other public channels in Brazil. While working in Piaui, I wrote a long piece about the history of TV production in Brazil and the changes brought about by TV Globo, for presentation at the British Film Institute’s first international conference on cinema and television in 1998. The text became a blue print for a Channel Four film on the history of TV Globo and its owner, Roberto Marinho (“Beyond Citizen Kane”). I had met Mr. Marinho during my years working at TV Globo and was in good terms with him.
After leaving Piaui and returning to Rio, I continued producing for foreign television channels, volunteered for Lula during the campaign for Brazil’s 1989 presidential elections, the first since the end of the military dictatorship, and worked for LIESA, the organizers of Rio’s Carnival Parade. We packaged highlights and live transmission of Rio’s Carnival Parade and sold broadcasting rights to foreign television stations. But Fernando Collor de Mello was elected president and, consequently, I decided to leave Brazil again.
In 1990, I received an invitation to work as a TV producer at the United Nations in New York. I joined the organization at a time of great hope and major geopolitical changes. The cold war was coming to an end. Several cold war-related conflicts in Central America, Africa, and Asia were being finally solved and the UN played a major role creating many new peacekeeping missions to monitor the transition to peace, generally through organizing democratic elections. It was also the time of UN-organized conferences (environment, social development, women, children, etc.). I was directly involved in publicizing the changes taking place inside and outside the organization. I produced widespread TV coverage in the areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian emergencies and human rights, promoting these issues through the production of long and short format videos, for distribution to worldwide broadcasters. Our primary target for news was CNN World Report, a weekly 2-hour show that included contributions from UNTV and other 150 global broadcasters. The films we produced were also disseminated via the UN in Action series, consisting of 5 monthly short pieces about the work of the UN worldwide. The “UN in Action” series helped to usher in what has become known as “development news”. These pieces had a “long-shelf life” and could be used as “fillers” or complement coverage by TV broadcasters. They invariably told the story from the perspective of the “beneficiary” (meaning, a “character-based story-telling style”), following a narrative formula we helped creating, consisting of “problem-intervention-solution”. These 5 short features – produced in the Organization’s six official languages – were then sent to UNTV’s broadcasting partners worldwide, free-of-charge, on a monthly-basis, firstly via tape, later on via digital transfer. The Section also produced documentaries and current affair interview shows. A lot of the good will towards the UN ceased to exist after the Rwanda genocide, one of the organizations’ greatest failures. I happened to be in Rwanda during the genocide and this remains a significant trauma in my life (please note that both my parents were holocaust survivors). The war in the former Yugoslavia and the failure in Somalia were low points. The institution never really recovered from these massive failures. The Organization was suffering from lack of funding and there was a noticeable change of perception about the usefulness of the Organization. The UN was described, once again, as of “no relevance”. From then to now the UN has been going a tremendous “identity crisis”. The institution seems uncertain as what it wants to be – although it firmly remains a place where head of states meet. This undefined role remains, and it is absolutely unsustainable for the survival of the UN in the near future. The UN certainly reflects the wishes of their member states (in particular, the five permanent members of the Security Council), but the Secretariat itself has acquired too many responsibilities which are not implementable for lack of human/financial resources as well as lack of political will. The crisis going on at the UN does not bode well for humankind’s future, as there is nothing else to replace it.
During my period at the UN the revolutionary change from analog to digital took place. The UN took a very long time to embrace these changes. And when it did, it chose the wrong technical parameters. The reasons for this were financial and poor managerial decision making. I became chief of the UN Television Section in late 2008. I was committed to increase production by aiming at various target audiences (made it, in theory, by the emergency of social media), and through institutional and broadcasting dissemination making sure that features were cut to various lengths and distributed through various outlets.
I had been quite successful at raising funds for co-productions related to the UN’s priority themes (humans rights, environment, empowerment of women), etc. More than half of the Section’s production budget originated from funds raised outside the Department of Public Information. The co-production funding came primarily from other UN agencies, departments and offices.
While working at the UN, over a period of 15 years (from 1994 to 2009), I researched and filmed a documentary on the involvement of industrialists in funding paramilitary groups during Brazil’s military dictatorship. I self-funded this project. This film (“Citizen Boilesen”), won many film festivals in Brazil and abroad and helped me re-establishing a bridge with the documentary production industry in Brazil. After my retirement from the UN in late 2016, I have continued producing historical documentaries in Brazil. The budgets for these films came from Brazilian funding sources and mechanisms. Brazil has developed a sophisticated national audio-visual production infra-structure, but it remains to be seen whether this structure will last. This is due to political and financial pressures on ANCINE, Brazil’s national audio-visual policy-making body. Currently, I have four fully-funded films in different stages of production: a documentary trilogy for CineBrasilTV, a Brazilian cable channel, and a feature documentary (produced by Globo Films/GloboNews, ANCINE/FS, SPCINE and Italy’s Direzione Generale per il Cinema) for cinema distribution. I am a guest speaker at film events, academic institutions and other such meetings on UN-related themes. I have curated several exhibitions at museums and galleries in Europe and North America.
2) What is your current position, and how would you define your current production mission?
My current position - after retiring from the UN - is that of an "independent" producer/writer/director. I produce history films utilizing unusual narrative elements (apart from established primary/secondary/tertiary sources), including fiction films, animation, theater and other "non-traditional" story-telling elements mixing them with more traditional elements (governmental documents, expert interviews, photos, archive audio-visuals, etc.). I am primarily interested depicting unusual characters and not well-known (but significant) historical events through broadcasting and digital dissemination. Budgets that pay for these projects come from Brazilian funding sources. In Brazil is still possible to produce history films that don't have necessarily to follow traditional narrative structures of history films (invariably based on the tripod "archive material", "voice over" and "interviews"). Intellectually, my work focusses on representation of the "historic fact" through audio-visual narrative formats. Formally, my goal is to challenge the concept of what a historic film should look like. My "political production mission" is to resist the rising of fascism in Brazil and elsewhere through history.
3). How do you employ digital technology in production?
Primarily through recording and editing. At the UN I was able to purchase digital cameras - for producers and assistant producers' usage - and Mac computers containing the then latest version of Final Cut Pro editing software. I had no saying as far as big digital broadcast technology purchases (systems, post production hardware, professional editing equipment. etc.) were concerned. We used the digital (editing/camera) equipment to produce short, web-target pieces at the UN headquarters and within the city of New York. During production trips abroad, UN producers were required to carry a camera (often serving as a second camera on the shoot - we seldom sent a producer/cameraperson to produce UN stories by herself/himself), and computers for translating/pre-editing/producing the occasional news-piece.
In my current production framework, decisions on cameras and editing software are really the responsibility of my partners in Brazil. They use 4k cameras to film and Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro to edit video.
But there is an area that I am feeling the direct impact of digital communication technology: it Is the work performed during the pre-production stage. There are no doubts that more readily available archive materials (through uploading yourself in such platforms like YouTube and the systematic digitalization of film collections undertaken by the archive companies themselves), and the digitalization of some official government documents, have significantly contributed towards a more time-saving and productive pre-production/research period. This is particularly Important as far as the type of films I produced - heavily based on archive film materials, press reports, photos, fiction films, radio, governmental documentation, etc.). Its simpler (but not necessarily cheaper) to find out what materials are available and where. This is certainly due to the tremendous advances in digital technology. Furthermore, because of logistical issues and geographical distances - I am based in New York but my work partners in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo - I do a huge amount of work via Google Docs, Skype and WhatsApp. Every day, me and my work partners exchange messages, video, and general information via these digital communication platforms. I find that this work method leads to more time in front of computer(s) screen(s) Impacts positively on productivity and increases output. But it also must be noted, working with screens, in my experience, ideas tend to scatter, there are constant interruptions and deviations from work-goals and decision-making becomes more diffuse as well.
4). How do you use digital technology in post-production?
I have been using more and more animations, graphics and data in my films. This is consequence of the complex narratives/stories I am trying to tell. Digital post-production can help the filmmaker to make complex problems and ideas better understood by hers/his target audience. Digital effects can help increasing the story's dramatic arch by juxtaposing/clashing/contradicting/reinforcing opposite views and, thus, creating narrative tension.
A digression here on film complexity and the power of the audio-visual to change pre-established/previously-held views and believes: I am under no illusion that the films I have made (including the films I produced for the United Nations), have changed anyone's mind or views about any particular issue. Films tend to reinforce pre-established views and are not the preferred medium for disseminating complex information and ideas. The written text is more appropriate for this purpose. On the other hand, the tendency to simplify issues that are by nature very complex is a disservice to those who watch a documentary to learn about the human phenomena and the science of the universe. These are "by nature" complex ideas. Films should reflect, creatively, the complexity of the themes they deal with. And that is exactly when digital technology in post-production can help a great deal. Not to simplify complex ideas but problematize them.
5). How do you distribute? Broadcast? DVD?? Other?
The films that I have been involved with, throughout my professional career, have been disseminated mainly by TV broadcasters. Television has been the medium I have been most closely associated/involved with. Even the theatrical film I am currently producing will reach eventually cable-television. DVD as a distribution form is dying. My previous film, "Cidadao Boilesen", had an "established" French-Brazilian distributor (IMOVISION). I found that once a film wins a major festival, it becomes much easier to attract the interest of distributors. "Cidadao Boilesen" had a rather successful (for Brazilian standards) theatrical run and has been broadcast in 8 different national TV channels in Brazil. It has been screened several times at CUNY TV/NY and shown in over 40 major film festivals worldwide.
Since I funded the production out of pocket and wasn't doing it for profit, I "encouraged" piracy (there are various pirate versions on YouTube, some with close to 150 thousand "hits").
As traditional broadcasting disappears, the question remains: what will replace it? And how will be longer formats funded? The YouTube model is an obvious candidate but how to monetarize it? Ditto regarding sending digital files via the Internet. How can the independent producer afford more costly productions without institutional backing? This remains the unanswered riddle of contemporary fiction/documentary production and distribution.
6). What bandwidths do you have access to?
Bandwidth Is not something I deal with.
7) Do you use internet distribution systems? If so, which ones?
I have not used it in the past. I have heard from friends and colleagues that the marketplace for documentary distribution via the Internet is still very uneven. A work in (slow) progress. It seems that video needs to go viral before anyone can make any money through Internet-based distribution. For celebrity-centered films, cat-dog related films, and nostalgia-themed productions this approach seems to work. But for the kind of (historical) films I make I am not sure that Internet-based distribution is, currently, economically viable. Bear in mind that most of the films I make are "Brazilian-centered" and their scope/reach is fairly limited outside the country (apart from festivals and academic-related events).
8). Do you feel digital technology has made your material more available?
to the populations you want to reach?
No doubts that in my particular case this is definitely true. But we must consider what was the context in which my work was inserted. In the case of my UN work, I had the "backing" of the institution "United Nations" which not only produced (paid for) the content but also disseminated it through its official digital outlets. UN audio-visual narrative products were disseminated primarily in two ways: directly to broadcasters worldwide (in six "official" languages) via digital file transfer distribution. And direct access via the UN's own digital dissemination assets through UN-YouTube, UN-Webcast, UN-Social Media, UN-Twitter, UN-websites and portals and other digital platforms. UN-live coverage (especially General Assembly and Security Council meetings and ceremonies) were also made available live to worldwide broadcasters as well as the general public, through UN's and external digital platforms. All materials were made available free-of-charge. Archive materials could be purchased with a nominal fee covering technical costs and transport.
As far as the film I produced, "Cidadao Boilesen", its success is probably related to the fact that the film won various major film festivals and achieved a certain degree of notoriety in Brazil (and, to a certain extent, abroad). That probably explains its relative success at the YouTube platform and other digital sites.
9). What is the attitude of your superiors towards digital technology?
Do they understand how it is changing the global media landscape?
First, I need to say that I myself was not prepared for the major changes ushered in by digital technology. But I soon realized that this was an irreversible move. We, at UNTV, kept in close touch with international broadcasters and were fairly-well informed about the digital revolution going on. For most established media companies, the transition analog - digital was very traumatic but it was here to stay. The UN typically chose to ignore this revolution, to begin with.
At the leadership level within the UN's Department of Public Information, these radical changes occurring in the broadcast industry took a real long time (over one decade) to be absorbed. Making our superiors understand why the UN should go from analog to digital was a tremendous problem during my days at the United Nations. To put it in a simpler way, the communication leadership at the UN had absolutely no clue about, for example, the extraordinary importance of a asset like "webcast". It took literally years before I was able to convince my superiors of the crucially vital role played by UN Webcast as a direct, no filter/mediation communication tool directly addressing the general public, and thus, bypassing traditional (and non-traditional) media. The communication leadership at the UN took years to understand that the traditional media triumvirate (Radio/TV/Press) was in its way out. And that the United Nations was utterly unprepared for the urgent task of finding new ways to communicate utilizing new digital tools for the purpose of "telling its own story to the world". Unfortunately, when the transition analog - digital did take place - as a direct consequence of the implementation of the Secretariat's Capital Master Plan, the $1.876 billion renovation of the UN complex – many poor decisions were made. These determinations were based on ignorant outside consultants, lack of judgement and common sense and dubious money saving schemes that has since cost the Organization dearly. A case in point is the technically low standards used for keeping digital audio-visual “legacy” archive. The quality of what is to be preserved for posterity is well below what is to be expected (or accepted by contemporary technical standards) and its doubtful whether the historical material currently being recorded will last for long. During my tenure at the UN, I never perceived an institutional care for its extraordinary audio-visual archive – there were never enough resources (human/technical/financial) to manage such an important collection. Solutions were always short-termed. Long termed planning, broad strategies and logical technical decisions were never implemented (certainly this was the case while I was working at the institution). The archive was never seen as an asset, something to be proud of. Rather, it was a costly, unglamorous, a source for headaches of senior communication managers. What was in fact achieved during the last three decades in the UN audio-visual is due to the incredible abnegation and hard work-ethics of those who manned the archives. We truly loved the UN film archives. But for years the UN leadership tried to rid itself of both, audio-visual and textual archives, thanks to the incredible short-sightness of those responsible for these areas. I imagine that the situation remains the same. This is heartbreaking as the UN possesses one of the most extraordinary and vital audio-visual archives worldwide. Its precious holdings – telling the world history from the end of the Second World War to our days – will probably rot away, just like the institution itself, in the coming years.
1o). Do you use New Media to promote or finance your productions? If so,
please explain.
11). Finally, what are your own views on the future of digital documentary?
I am very pessimistic regarding the future of documentary production, particularly the investigative/historic genre. Production costs, lack of alternatives for dissemination, indiference and sheer disinterest are the culprits of the rapid demise of documentaries. This is a global phenomenon. Currently, most documentary production globally seems to follow two distinct patterns:
1. Pop/Nostalgic documentaries, primarily aimed at older viewers (and these are generally reasonably budgeted films);
2. Cheaply made, mostly innocuous "let's follow someone and see what happens" genre.
Documentaries that depend on serious investigation/research and/or rely on expensive archive material are fast disappearing. Some national broadcasters in Europe and Public Channels globally still produce expensive, well-crafted historic documentaries but they tend to be boring and humorless. They seldom challenge the dictatorship of format - invariably "voice over/archive/interview". There will be less and less funds available for documentary films that do not conform to mainstream narrative styles. I hope I am wrong.
|
4. Gill Fickling:
GILL FICK
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ted Folke <tedfolke@gmail.com> Date: Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 6:57 PM Subject: Re: Changes at UNTV To: gill fickling <gillfickling@yahoo.com> Cc: Theodore_Folke <Theodore_Folke@fitnyc.edu>
Hi Gill,
Many thanks for the prompt reply - and thanks for all the details.
As it happens, I have been a huge fan of Angelique Kidjo for years, and I congratulate you on getting her involvement. What a pity Senior Management
didn’t support you, because that was a major coup for the org, as well as UNTV.
Otherwise, everything you say confirms what I have been hearing. In my last year as Chief of the MONUSCO Video Unit, I started a search for replacements for myself and a few others, and I noticed an unfortunate trend towards recruitment of “ multimedia “ professionals who knew nothing about production. We had no capacity or mandate to train anyone, so this was a big problem for me.
As it happens, I was lucky to have succeeded Yasmina Bouziane as Chief, and she had managed to recruit an outstanding team. For my first 4 years, all went well, but with my own departure imminent in my 5th year, I started to search for a new Chief. I found one who was interested in the job - Alban, whom you may have met - but all my recommendations were ignored after I left.
I have to admit this initially broke my heart, since I loved our whole team and was proud of the work we did- as well as the mission itself. By the way, I also had my share of problems with senior managers - I had 6 in 5 years - and I ended up being OIC/PID myself by default when my last boss was unceremoniously sacked on Christmas Eve 2011.
In retrospect, I am just thankful I was able to do good work for 5 years - but I still think it is a sad story. If you have any interest, I will be happy to share my Mission End Report with all the gory details - think you might be able to appreciate it more than most. FYI. I have tested it on my FIT students, so I know it is not too boring!:)
Speaking of my students, I think the UN focus on “ social media” is misguided - at best . At worst, it is an excuse for hiring a lot of unqualified people for all the wrong reasons. I have been studying fashion blogging for the past few years, and the UN is just not equipped to do social media successfully - except on a limited scale.
Sorry to rant, but am sure you understand my feelings!:)
Many thanks again, and rest assured I shall be discrete!!
Cheers,
Ted
Hi Ted,
You are welcome to any snippets of information I can offer. Sadly, UNTV has changed beyond all recognition, but largely so since I left the Organization in June 2017, so a lot of what's gone on since then is a mystery also to me. Try contacting Francis Mead for an update since 2017.
First I'll fill you in on a little of the chronology post-Chaim; when he left I took over temporarily as Chief for 9 months, until the newly appointed Chief arrived. I only overlapped with her for (a very unpleasant!) three months and it was after I had left that "21st Century" was axed. Whilst I was Acting Chief of UNTV, I also continued to carry out my role as both Executive Producer of "21st Century" as well as one of the segment-producers.
For at least a couple of years prior to my retirement, the writing was on the wall that many people wanted "21st Century" to go. The reasoning seemed to be that most audiences now have the attention-span of a mosquito and were not interested in long-format pieces. However, as a small group of us frequently argued, "21st Century" was shown monthly on some 80 global broadcast stations and despite data on viewing audiences being extremely limited, we knew that the programme was reaching global audiences in their millions. The French version - more on that later - was produced in partnership with TV5 Monde, the largest Francophone network in the world (currently claims to reach 55 million viewers - I seem to remember the figure was some 25 million when we partnered with them, but a very respectable outlet for a UN product). The Chinese version was produced in partnership with a Chinese network which has since disappeared but that reached an audience also in the millions. And around the end of 2016, we established a partnership with a Nigerian network to produce a Nigerian version. These three language versions were all presenter-led, although in 2016 (I think) we had to drop Daljit Dhaliwal as presenter of the English version due to budget restrictions. We updated the "look" and format of the Engl show to move away from, as you called it in your article, the "voice of god" approach.
In 2015, (I think - sorry can't remember dates of when some things happened) I brought Angelique Kidjo on board as the on-screen presenter of the French version. This was without the support of the higher management of DPI who did not seem to see the kudos in having such an international star as our presenter. With the support of TV5 Monde, who wanted Kidjo as the show-face, and after several months of struggle internally, I finally got her on contract as the host. At the glitzy launch in NY, laid on by TV5 Monde to mark the event, the then Director of Communications did at least have the grace to apologize for not having supported me in the long fight to bring Kidjo on board only recognizing the PR-coup for DPI when she saw the importance TV5 Monde placed on our ongoing partnership. With Kidjo fronting the show, audience figures particularly across French-speaking Africa increased.
Funding for 21st Century stories has been an increasing problem. When I started with the unit in 2008, we still had a production budget and could identify important stories and, within limits, go and shoot them. The glory days! But as time went on, budgets became more and more squeezed and the need to raise our own funds became more acute. By the end of my time at UNTV, most of our "21st Century" stories were funded by other UN Agencies and partners, with funds we sought ourselves. DPI management did NOT help in this process. It was down to us, TV Producers, to find the partners and funds. We found that the success of 21stC and its global reach, was a pull for UN partners many of whom saw the advantage in having their work/name shared with the large global audiences. However, as producers the need to satisfy financial partners in terms of story content was often restrictive and curtailed our journalistic integrity for honest reporting. This sometimes meant compromising content to keep the "client" happy.
OK, thats some background - now to your questions:
1. The change of the name from DPI to GCD was happening when I left in the summer of 2017. I do not know who's idea it was, nor exactly when it came into place, but I know that Dep Director of News and Media Division, Mita, was very involved in this. (By the way, yes, please keep any comments/info from me anonymous!!)
2. The increasing focus on social media was happening while I was still there. In fact, in the months before Chaim left, I came up with a production strategy for TV section - we were no longer known as UNTV then but I can't say when exactly that change took place. This strategy was requested by the Director and Deputy Director of News and Media Division and was to include the production of shorter social media pieces with each story. Also our pieces, both long and short format, needed to now be clearly linked to the specific UN priorities for that year, as well as to key UN "days" in the calendar. So a 21stC show for a specific month needed to be linked to, for example, an upcoming UN Summit on climate change; from the 21stC story, would also be produced a UNIA feature and within that month, the UN Summit as well as any UN days falling in that month needed to be highlighted with a 1-2 mins piece for social media in eight languages (the 6 official plus Portuguese and Kiswahili). The only way to produce this increased output of stories in the myriad of languages, was to rely on interns - not an ideal way to maintaining quality and story integrity (skilled as many of the interns were, they often lacked knowledge of UN sensibilities as well as technical expertise). We were turning into a sausage factory - quantity of output was now overtaking quality.
The switch to focus primarily on social media took place when Chaims replacement arrived. As you know, she has no experience in long-format narrative pieces, her background being in social media so within days of her arrival, the writing was on the wall that "21stC" would be short-lived. Indeed, it continued for the duration of Angelique Kidjo's contract for the french version (which was derived from the Engl version) and then it was cut. I was no longer there then so don't know how this came about. You may like to contact Francis Mead for info. He and I fought bitterly for "21stC" to be continued.
You asked WHY the increased focus on social media. Many of us felt it was so that boxes could be ticked that, yes, the department was producing social media as, when this move began, there was little monitoring of who was watching what went out on social media. It seemed to be enough to be able to say in high-level meetings that, yes, we were putting piece out on YouTube - even if only 12 people were viewing them and most of them were inside the UN. The fact that MILLIONS were seeing our narrative pieces on broadcast stations around the world, seemed to be irrelevant in comparison to this new "wonder" called social media!
I'm not sure if I've answered your questions and if you want a follow-on chat, let me know and we can set it up.
Good luck with the piece and do send me a copy when it's finished.
best,
Gill
Hi Gill,
I just want you to know how much I appreciate any information you can offer, since It is certainly relevant for my dissertation case study of UNTV in the age of New Media. Thank you!
My problem is simple - I need to fill in some gaps about what happened after
Chaim left . Previously, I interviewed Steve, Chaim and Georges Leclerc, and while all three are different, they all were proud of the success of UN IN ACTION, which Georges told me was distributed in 135 countries at its peak, and
which thus got the UN message around the world, and thereforevattracted support from all the agencies who wanted to be on the show.
When combined with UNTV 21st Century, which I saw as a prestge showpiece, UNTV was doing a pretty good job through to when Chaim retired in 2017. For that reason, I was startled to discover that neither Alison Smale nor any of her colleagues ever talked with him about his experience of 10 years as chief. Instead, a decision was made by someone to discontinue UNTV 21st Century, and to appoint as head of UN Video someone with no broadcast production experience.
According to Chaim, now there is little production of programs with “narrative content”’ , and UNTV producers have no money for travel, and are expected to find both funding and distribution for the productions they are assigned. In all honesty, I could not believe this when I heard it,but then I heard the same story from people both inside and outside UNTV.
I tried to speak to the current head of Video to get some clarity, but she went into CYA mode and called Alison Smale, who insisted upon giving me written answere to written questions for my PassBlue article. Now Alison has been replaced by Melissa Fleming, whom I know through Celine Schmitt, her excellent representative in the DRC, and who should be a big improvement.
However, I still have big questions - I see broadcast and social media as branches of the same media tree - just different forms of distributiion. Why this artficial distinction? Sorry to go on,but trust you understand what I am trying to say.
So, here are my questions:
1. When was it decided to rebrand DPI as GCD, and who made this decision?
I first learned of this last year in a visit to the Secretariat, and I was stunned.
I have learned a bit about branding in my years as a professor at F.I.T, and this decision baffles me.
2. Who decided UNTV should focus on “ Social Media” and why? Please note I am an enthusiastic advocate of New Media, which I see as a compliment to media campaigns in broadcast media.
3. What happened to UNTV 21st Century?
In closing, anything you can offer will be invaluable. My goal is to find a logical end to my case study that shows how UNTV has adjusted to New Media, and I want to emphasize I have no axes to grind. Indeed, I doubt if my professor at Sweden’s University of Lund cares about internal UN politics - I I just need to
have an ending that makes some sense.
If you want this to be off the record, that is fine with me- just let me know.
Many thanks again,
Cheers,
Ted
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5. Alison Smale:
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Sofia Diarra <sofia.diarra@un.org>
Date: Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 17:56
Subject: Re: Article on UN Video for PassBlue
To: Ted Folke <tedfolke@gmail.com>
CC: Dulcie <passblue1@gmail.com>, Hua Jiang <jiang1@un.org>, Mita Hosali <hosali@un.org>, Jaya Dayal <dayalj@un.org>, Darrin Farrant <farrant@un.org>
Dear Ted,
Thank you for your questions.
Please find the response to your questions below from Under-Secretary General, Ms. Alison Smale.
If you have any further questions please send them to her office to the attention of Ms. Jaya Dayal and Mr. Darrin Farrant copied.
Kind regards.
----------------------------------------------------------------
From Alison Smale, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications:
The role of the Department of Global Communications (DGC) is to share the United Nations story with the world, in multiple languages and formats so that people everywhere have a better understanding of the UN’s work and values.
UN Video and UN TV are a key part of those efforts, using engaging visual content to tell the UN story across its three pillars: peace & security, human rights, and sustainable development. Most recently we have created compelling video stories around issues ranging from climate action to peacekeeping to counter-terrorism to the fight for gender equality.
As technologies evolve, DGC is adapting too, updating our formats, platforms and distribution channels and partners so we can reach larger audiences and make a greater impact. Increasingly we are making virtual reality films, for example, and more mobile-friendly content.
Appendix D: Miscellaneous Documents
